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THE UNIVERSITY 
OF ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


Presented by 
Mrs. G. W. Simpson 
1934 | 
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THE WORKS 


SM HARLES READE 


A NEW EDITION IN NINE VOLUIMES 


Illustrated with One Hundred and Twelve Full-Page 
Wood Engravings 


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VOLUME EIGHT 


New York 
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CONTENTS OF VOLUME EIGHT. 


A TERRIBLE TEMPTATION............. ONIVERSTY Heit i a 
PRRIMETIETON |. CA gs tu is e....... cca Pet PME IEEINOD De veee 209 
Bist OR ILLUStRATIONS, 

A TERRIBLE TEMPTATION. 

CHAPTER 
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Ser ramec. PRULV OC. TN WOLTD Ye Pie. 5 dels vlnieg ila vg welne ss mite votive wey am cup ieee vii. 
‘Only think—he had a fit, and allfor me! What shallI do?”’’............ vili. 
Moss’s comments became very intelligible to her the moment she saw the 
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Supported by a childless, despairing woman....... PEM eee oP eh, Aer Xi. 
At this moment Mr. Angelo dashed up ............. Be PO eee, Pee oes xvi. 
Ae Clone sor vecenla CODY: OlalhGcwliue tec tid: vis cv'duiw ais es cable at cease ditbean's sve xxix. 
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A SIMPLETON. 
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871414 


A TERRIBLE TEMPTATION. 


CHAPTER I. 


THE morning-room of a large house in 
Portman Square, London. 

A gentleman in the prime of life stood 
with his elbow on the broad mantel- 
piece, and made himself agreeable to a 
young lady, seated a little way off, 
playing at work. 

To the ear he was only-conversing, but 
his eyes dwelt on her with loving admira- 
tion all the time. Her posture was favor- 
able to this furtive inspection, for she 
leaned her fair head over her work 
with a pretty, modest, demure air, that 
seemed to say, ‘“‘I suspect I am being 
admired: I will not look to see: I might 
have to check it.’’ 

The gentleman’s features were ordi- 
nary, except his brow—that had power 
in it—but he had the beauty of color; his 
sunburned features glowed with health, 
and his eye was bright. On the whole, 
rather. good-looking when he smiled, but 
ugly when he frowned; for his: frown 
was a scowl, and betrayed a remarkable 
power of hating. 

Miss Arabella Bruce was a beauty. 
She had glorious masses of dark red hair, 
and a dazzling white neck to set it off; 
large, dove-like eyes, and a_ blooming 
oval face, which would have been classi- 
cal if her lips had been thin and finely 
chiseled ; but here came in her Anglo- 
Saxon breed, and spared society a Mi- 
nerva by giving her two full and rosy 
lips. They made a smallish mouth at 


(rest, but parted ever so wide when they 


smiled, and ravished the beholder with 
long, even rows of dazzling white teeth. 

Her figure was tall and rather slim, 
but not at all commanding. There are 
people whose very bodies express charac- 
ter; and this tall, supple, graceful frame 
of Bella Bruce breathed womanly sub_ 
servience; so did her gestures. She 
would take up or put down her own 
scissors half timidly, and look around 
before threading her needle, as if to see 
whether any soul objected. Her favorite 
word was “‘ May I?’’ with a stress on 
the ‘‘ May,’’ and she used it where most 
girls would say “I will,” or nothing, 
and do it. 

Mr. Richard Bassett was in love with 
her, and also conscious that her fifteen 
thousand pounds would be a fine addition 
to his present income, which was small, 
though his distant expectations were 
great. As he had known her but one 
month, and she seemed rather amiable 
than inflammable, he had the prudence 
to proceed by degrees ; and that is why, 
though his eyes gloated on her, he merely 
regaled her with the gossip of the day, 
not worth recording here. But when he 
had actually taken his hat to go, Bella 
Bruce put him a question that had been 
on her mind the whole time, for which 
reason she had reserved it to the very last 
moment. 

‘“‘TIs Sir Charles Bassett in town?’ 
said she, mighty carelessly, but bending” 
a little lower over her embroidery. 

(5) 


6 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


‘““Don’t know,’’ said Richard Bassett, 
with such a sudden brevity and asperity 
that Miss Bruce looked up and opened 
her, lovely eyes. Mr. Richard Bassett 
replied to this mute inquiry, ‘‘ We don’t 
speak.’’ Then, after a pause, ‘‘ He has 
robbed me of my inheritance.”’ 

“¢Oh, Mr. Bassett !”’ 

«Yes, Miss Bruce, the Bassett and 
Huntercombe estates were mine by right 
of birth. My father was the eldest son, 
and they were entailed on him. But Sir 
Charles’s father persuaded my old, doting 
grandfather to cut off the entail, and 
_ settle the estates on him and his heirs; 
and so they robbed me of every acre they 
could. Luckily my little estate of High- 
more was settled on my mother and her 
issue too tight for the villains to undo.”’ 

These harsh expressions, applied to his 
own kin, and the abruptness and heat 
they were uttered with, surprised and 
repelled his gentle listener. She shrank 
a little away from him. He observed it. 
She replied not to his words, but to her 
own thought: 

‘But, after all, it does seem hard.”’ 
She added, with a little fervor, ‘‘ But it 
wasn’t poor Sir Charles’s doing, after 
all.”’ 

‘‘He is content to reap the benefit,”’ 
said Richard Bassett, sternly. 

Then, finding he was making a sorry 
impression, he tried to get away from the 
subject. I say tried, for till a man can 
double like a hare he will never get away 
from his hobby. ‘‘ Excuse me,’’ said he ; 
‘I ought never to speak about it. Let 
us talk of something else. You cannot 
enter into my feelings; it makes my 
blood boil. Oh, Miss Bruce! you can’t 
conceive what a disinherited man feels— 
and I live at the very door: his old trees, 
that ought to be mine, fling their shadows 
over my little flower beds; the sixty 
chimneys of Huntercombe Hall look down 
on my cottage; his acres of lawn run up 
to my little garden, and nothing but a 
ha-ha between us.’’ y 

‘It zs hard,’’ said Miss Bruce, com- 
posedly; not that she entered into a 
‘hardship of this vulgar sort, but it was 
her nature to soothe and please people. 


‘Hard!’ cried Richard Bassett, en- 
couraged by even this faint sympathy ; 
‘‘it would be unendurable but for one 
thing—I shall have my own some day.”’ 

“T am glad of that,’ said the lady; 
“but how?” | 

‘‘ By outliving the wrongful heir.”’ 

Miss Bruce turned pale. She had little 
experience of men’s passions. ‘Oh, Mr. 
Bassett !’’ said she—and there was some- 
thing pure and holy in the look of sorrow 
and alarm she cast on the presumptuous 


speaker—‘‘ pray do not cherish such 
thoughts. They willdo youharm. And 
remember life and death are not in our 
hands. Besides—’’ 

Well? ”’ 

*«Sir Charles might—’’ 

“Well ?.’” 


*Migcht he not— marry —and have 
children ?”’ This with more hesitation 
and a deeper blush than appeared abso- 
lutely necessary. 

‘Oh, there’s no fear of that. Property 
ill-gotten never descends. Charles is a 
worn-out rake.- He was fast at EKton— 
fast at Oxford—fast in London. Why, 
he looks ten years older than IJ, and he is 
three years younger. He had a fit two 
years ago. Besides, he is not a marrying 
man. Bassett and Huntercombe will be 
mine. And oh! Miss Bruce, if ever they 
are mine—”’ 

‘Sir Charles Bassett!’’ trumpeted a . 
servant at the door; and then waited, 
prudently, to know whether his young 
lady, whom he had caught blushing so 
red with one gentleman, would be at 
home to another. 

«Wait a moment,” said Miss Bruce 
to him. Then, discreetly ignoring what 
Bassett had said last, and lowering her 
voice almost to a whisper, she said, 
hurriedly: ‘‘ You should not blame him 
for the faults of others. There—I have 
not been long acquainted with either, and 
am little entitled to inter— But it is such 
a pity you are not friends. He is very 
good, I assure you, and very nice. Let 
me reconcile youtwo. May I??’’ 

This well-meant petition was uttered 
very sweetly; and, indeed—if I may be 
permitted—in a way to dissolve a bear. 


A THRRIBLE 


But this was not a bear, nor anything 
else that is placable; it was a man with 
a hobby grievance ; so he replied in char- 
acter : 

‘‘That is impossible so long as he 
keeps me out of my own.’’ He had the 
grace, however, to add, half sullenly, 
‘«‘Hxcuse me; I feel I have been too 
vehement.”’ | 

Miss Bruce, thus repelled, answered, 
rather coldly: 

“Oh, never mind that; it was very 
natural.—I am at home, then,’’ said she 
to the servant. 

Mr. Bassett took the hint, but turned 
at the door, and said, with no little agi- 
tation, ‘‘l was not aware he visits you. 
One word —don’t let his ill-gotten acres 
make you quite forget the disinherited 
one.’’ And so he left her, with an im- 
_ ploring look. 

She felt red with all this, so she slipped 
out at another door, to cool her cheeks 
and imprison a stray curl for Sir 
Charles. 

He strolled into the empty room, with 
the easy, languid air of fashion. His 
features were well cut, and had some 
nobility ; but his sickly complexion and 
the lines under his eyes told a tale of dis- 
sipation. He appeared ten years older 
than he was, and thoroughly blasé. 

Yet when Miss Bruce entered the room 
with a smile and a little blush, he bright- 
ened up and looked handsome, and greeted 
her with momentary warmth. 

After the usual inquiries she asked him 
if he had met any body. 

“Where ? ”’ 

** Here ; just now.”’ 

ae O.2* 

““ What, nobody at all?”’ 

“Only my sulky cousin; I don’t call 
him anybody,’’ drawled Sir Charles, who 
was now relapsing into his normal con- 
dition of semi-apathy. 

“Oh,” said Miss Bruce gayly, “you 
must expect him to be a little cross. It 
is not so very nice to be disinherited, let 
me tell you.”’ 

‘‘“And who has disinherited the fel- 
low ?.”’ 

“TY forget; but you disinherited him 


TEMPTATION. " 


among you. Never mind; it can’t be 
helped now. When did you come back 
to town? I didn’t see you at Lady 
d’Arcy’s ball, did I?’’ 

‘*You did not, unfortunately for me; 
but you would if 1 had known you were 
to be there. But about Richard : he may 
tell you what he likes, but he was not dis- 
inherited ; he was bought out. The fact 
is, his father was uncommonly fast. My 
grandfather paid his debts again and 
again; but at last the old gentleman 
found he was dealing with the Jews for 
his reversion. Then there was an awful 
row. It ended in my grandfather out- 
bidding the Jews. He bought the rever- 
Sion of his estate from his own son for a 
large sum of money (he had to raise it by 
mortgages) ; then they cut off the entail 
between them, and he entailed the mort- 
gaged estate on his other son, and his 
grandson (that was me), and on my heir- 
at-law. Richard’s father squandered his 
thirty thousand pounds before he died ; 
my father husbanded the estates, got 
into Parliament, and they put a tail to 
his name.”’ 

Sir Charles delivered this version of the 
facts with a languid composure that con- 
trasted deliciously with Richard’s heat in 
telling the story his way (to be sure, 
Sir Charles had got Huntercombe and 
Bassett, and it is easier to be philosophi- 
cal on the right side of the boundary 
hedge), and wound up with a sort of co- 
rollary: ‘‘Dick Bassett suffers by his 
father’s vices, and I profit by mine’s 
virtues. Where’s the injustice ? ’’ 

‘“ Nowhere, and the sooner you are rec- 
onciled the better.’’ 

Sir Charles demurred. ‘Oh, I don’t 
want to quarrel with the fellow: but he 
is a regular thorn in my side, with his 
little trumpery estate, all in’ broken 
patches. He shoots my pheasants in 
the unfairest way.’’ Here the landed pro- 
prietor showed real irritation, but only 
for a moment. He concluded calmly, 
“The fact is, he is not quite a gentle- 
man. Fancy his coming and whining to 
you about our family affairs, and then 
telling you a falsehood !”’ 


‘““No, no; he did not mean. It was his 


\ 


8 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


way of looking at things. You can afford 
to forgive him\’’ 

«Yes, but not if he sets you against 
me.’ 

“But he cannot do that. The more 
any one was to speak against you, the 
more I—of course.”’ 

This admission fired Sir Charles; he 
drew nearer, and, thanks to his cousin’s 
interference, spoke the language of love 
more warmly and directly than he had 
ever done before, 

The lady blushed, and defended herself 
feebly. Sir Charles grew warmer, and 
at last elicited from her a timid but ten- 
der avowal, that made him supremely 
happy. 

When he left her this brief ecstasy 
was succeeded by regrets on account of 
the years he had wasted in follies and 
intrigues. 

He smoked five cigars, and pondered 
the difference between the pure creature 
who now honored him with her virgin 
affections and beauties of a different 
character who had played their parts in 
his luxurious life. 

After profound deliberation he sent for 
his solicitor. They lighted the inevitable 
cigars, and the following observations 
struggled feebly out along with the 
smoke. 

‘‘Mr. Oldfield, I’m going to be mar- 
ried.”’ 

‘‘Glad to hear it, Sir Charles.’ (Vis- 
ion of settlements.) ‘‘It is a high time 
you were.’ (Puff—puff.) 

“Want your advice and assistance 
first.’ 

‘< Certainly.”’ 

‘Must put down my pony-carriage 
. now, you know.’’ 

‘«*A very proper retrenchment; but 
you can do that without my assistance.”’ 

‘There would be sure to be a row—if 
Idid. I daresay there will be as it is. 
At any rate, [ want to do the thing like 
a gentleman.”’ 

“‘Send ’em to Tattersall’s.”’ (Puff.) 

‘¢ And the girl that drives them in the 
park, and draws all the duchesses and 
countesses at her tail—am I to send her 
to Tattersall’s?’’ (Puff.) 


“Oh, it is her you want to put down, 
then? ” 
‘““Why, of course.” 


CHAPTER II. 


Str CHARLES and Mr. Oldfield settled 
that lady’s retiring pension, and Mr. 
Oldfield took the memoranda home, with 
instructions to prepare a draft deed for 
Miss Somerset’s approval. 

Meantime Sir Charles visited Miss 
Bruce every day. Her affections for him 
grew visibly, for being engaged gave he 
the courage to love. . 

Mr. Bassett called pretty often; but 
one day he met Sir Charles on the stairs, 
and scowled. 

That scowl cost him dear, for Sir 
Charles thereupon represented to Bella 
that a man with a grievance is a bore to 
the very eye, and asked her to receive no 
more visits from his scowling cousin. 
The lady smiled, and said, with soft 
complacency, “‘ 1 obey.’’ 

Sir Charles’s gallantry was shocked. 

‘““No, don’t say ‘obey.’ It is a little 
favor I ventured to ask.”’ 

‘© Jt is like you to ask what you have a 
right to command. I shall be out to him 
in future, and to every one who is dis- 
agreeable to you. What! does ‘obey’ 
frighten you from my lips? To me it is 
the sweetest in the language. Oh, please 
let me ‘obey’ you! May I?” 

Upon this, as vanity is seldom out of 
call, Sir Charles swelled like a turkey- 
cock, and loftily consented to indulge 
Bella Bruce’s strange propensity. 

From that hour she was never at home 
to Mr. Bassett. 

He began to suspect; and one day, 
after he had been kept out with the 
loud, stolid ‘‘ Not at home ”’ of practiced 
mendacity, he watched, and saw Sir 
Charles admitted. 

He divined it all in a moment, and 
turned to wormwood. What! was he 


A TERRIBLE 


to be robbed of the lady he loved—and 
her fifteen thousand pounds—by the very 
man who had robbed him of his ancestral 
fields? He dwelt othe double grievance 
till it nearly frenzied him. But he could 
do nothing: it was his fate. His only 
hope was that Sir Charles, the arrant 
flirt, would desert this beauty after a 
time, as he had the others. 

But one afternoon, in the smoking-room 
of his club, a gentleman said to him, ‘‘So 
your cousin Charles is engaged to the 
Yorkshire beauty, Bell Bruce? ”’ 

‘‘He is flirting with her, I believe,’’ 
said Richard. 

‘‘No, no,”’ said the other; ‘‘they are 
engaged. I know it fora fact. They are 
to be married next month.’’ 

Mr. Richard Bassett digested this fresh 
pill in moody silence, while the gentle- 
men of the club discussed the engage- 
ment with easy levity. They soon passed 
to a topic of wider interest, viz., who was 
to succeed Sir Charles with La Somerset. 
Bassett began to listen attentively, and 
learned for the first time Sir Charles 
Bassett’s connection with that lady, and 
also that she was a woman of a daring 
nature and furious temper. At first he 
was merely surprised ; but soon hatred 
and jealousy whispered in his ear that 
with these materials it must be possible 
to wound those who had wounded him. 

Mr. Marsh, a young gentleman with a 
receding chin, and a mustache between 
hay and straw, had taken great care to 
let them all know he was acquainted with 
Miss Somerset. So Richard got Marsh 
alone, and sounded him. Could he call 
upon the lady without ceremony ? 

“You won’t get in. Her street door 
is jolly well guarded, I can tell you.”’ 

“*T am very curious to see her in her 
own house.’’ 

“So are a good many fellows.”’ 

“Could you not give me an introduc- 
tion?” 

Marsh shook his head sapiently for a 
considerable time, and with all this shak- 
ing, as it appeared, out fell words of 
wisdom. ‘‘Don’t see it. I’m awfully 
spooney on her myself; and, you know, 
when a fellow introduces another fellow, 


TEMPTATION. 9 


that fellow always cuts the other fellow 
out.’’ Then, descending from the words 
of the wise and their dark sayings to a 
petty but pertinent fact, he added, ‘* Be- 
sides, 1’m only let in myself about once 
in five times.’’ 

‘‘*She gives herself wonderful airs, it 
seems,’’ said Bassett, rather bitterly. 

Marsh fired up. ‘‘So would any, wo- 
man that was as beautiful, and as witty, 
and as much run after as sheis. Why, 
she is a leader of fashion. Look at all 
the ladies following her round the park. 
They used to drive on the north side of 
the Serpentine. She just held up her fin- 
ger, and now they have cut the Serpen- 
tine, and followed her to the south drive.”’ 

‘*Oh, indeed!’’ said Bassett. ‘* Ah! 
then this is a great lady ; a poor country 
Squire must not venture into her august 
presence.’’ He turned savagely on his 
heel, and Marsh went and made sickly 
mirth at his expense. 

By this means the matter soon came to 
the ears of old Mr. Woodgate, the father 
of that club, and a genial gossip. He 
got hold of Bassett in the dinner-room, 
and examined him. ‘‘So you want an 
introduction to La Somerset, and Marsh 
refuses—Marsh, hitherto celebrated for 
his weak head rather than his hard 
heart ? *’ 

Richard Bassett nodded rather sullen- 
ly. He had not bargained for this rapid 
publicity. 

The venerable chief resumed : ‘‘ We all 
consider Marsh’s conduct unclubable, 
and a thing to be combined against. 
Wanted—an Anti-dog-in-the-manger 


League. Ill introduce you to the Somer- 
set.”’ 
“What! do you visit her?’ asked 


Bassett, in some astonishment. 

The old gentleman held up his hands in 
droll disclaimer, and chuckled merrily. 
“No, no; L enjoy from the shore the dis- 
asters of my youthful friends—that sacred 
pleasure is left me. Do you see that ele- 
gant creature with the little auburn 
beard and mustache, waiting sweetly for 
his dinner. He launched the Somerset.”’ 

“‘ Launched her ?’’ 

“Yes; but for him she might have 


10 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


wasted her time breaking hearts and | or l’d break every d—d window in the 


slapping faces in some country village. 
He it was set her devastating society ; 
and with his aid she shall devastate you. 
—Vandeleur, will you join Bassett and 
me ?’’ 

Mr. Vandeleur, with ready grace, said 
he should be delighted, and they dined 
together accordingly. 

Mr. Vandeleur, six feet high, lank, but 
-graceful as a panther, and the pink of 
politeness, was, beneath his varnish, one 
of the wildest young men in London— 
gambler, horse-racer, libertine, what not ? 
—but in society charming, and his man- 
ners singularly elegant and winning. He 
never obtruded his vices in- good com- 
pany; in fact, you might dine with him 
all your life and not detect him. The 
young serpent was torpid in wine; but he 
came out, a bit at a time, in the sun- 
shine of Cigar. 

After a brisk conversation on current 
topics, the venerable chief told him plain- 
ly they were both curious to know the 
history of Miss Somerset, and he must 
tell it them. 

“Oh, with pleasure,’’ said the obliging 
youth. “Let us go into the smoking- 
room.”’ 


-« Tet—me—see. I picked her up by 
the sea-side. She promised well. at first. 
We put her on my chestnut mare, and 


she showed lots of courage, so she soon. 


learned to ride; but she kicked, even 
down there.’’ 

« Kicked !—whom ?”’ - 

‘* Kicked all round; I mean showed 
temper. And when she got to London, 
and had ridden a few times in the park, 
and swallowed fiattery, there was no 
holding her. I stood her cheek for a 
- good while, but at last I told the servants 
they must not turn her out, but they 
could keep her out. They sided with me 
for once. She had ridden over them, as 
well. The first time she went out they 
bolted the doors, and handed her boxes 
up the area steps.”’ 

«‘ How did she take that?” 

‘* Kasier than we expected. She said, 
‘Lucky for you beggars that I’m a lady, 


historian resumed. 
** Next day she cooled, and wrote a let- 


house.’ ”’ 


This caused a laugh. 


“ 


It subsided. The 


99 


ter. 

‘'TO.¥OU nee 

‘‘No, to my groom. Would you like 
to see it? It is a curiosity.” 

He sent one of the club waiters for his 
servant, and his servant for his desk, and 
produced the letter. . 

““There !’’ said Vandeleur. ‘She looks 
like a queen, and steps like an ere 
and this is how she writes : 


“DEAR JORGE—i have got the sak, 
an’ praps your turn nex. dear jorge he 
alwaies promise me the grey oss, which 
now an oss is life an death to me., If you 
was to ast him to lend me the grey he © 
wouldn’t refuse you, 

‘Yours respecfully, 
: ‘* RHODA SOMERSET.”’ 


When the letter and the handwriting, 
which, unfortunately, I cannot repro- 
duce, had been duly studied and oe 
proved, Vandeleur continued— 

‘““Now, you know, she had her good: 
points, after all. If any creature was ill,- 
she’d sit up all night and nurse them ; 
and she used to go to church on Sundays, 
and come back with the sting out of her; 
only then she would preach toa fellow, 
and bore him. She is awfully fond of 
preaching. Her dream is to jump ona. 
first-rate hunter, and ride across country, 
and preach to the villages. So, when . 
George came grinning to me with the 
letter, I told him to buy a new side-saddle | 
for the gray, and take her’ the lot, with . 
my compliments. I had noticed a.slight 
spavin in his near foreleg. She rode _ 
him that very day in the park, all. 
alone, and made such a sensation that 
next day my gray was standing in Lord 
Hailey’s stables. But she rode Hailey, 
like my gray, with a long spur, and he 
couldn’t stand it. None of ’em could ex- 
cept Sir Charles Bassett, and he doesn’t 
play fair—never goes near her.’’ | 

“And that gives him an unfair advant- 


A TERRIBLE 


age over his fascinating predecessors ? ”’ 
inquired the senior, slyly. 
: ‘Of course it does,’’ said Vandeleur, 
_ stoutly. ‘ You ask a girl to dine at 
Richmond once a month, and keep out of 
her way all the rest of the time, and give 
her lots nd money—she will never quarrel 
with you.’ 

‘Profit by this tmformation, young 

man,’’ said old Woodgate, severely ; ‘‘ it 
comes too late for me. In my day there 
existed no sure method of pleasing the 
fair. But now that is invented, along 
with everything else. Richmond and— 
absence, equivalent to ‘Richmond and 
_ victory!’ Now, Bassett, we have heard 
-the truth from the fountain-head, and it 
‘is rather serious. She swears, she kicks, 
she preaches. . Do you still desire an in- 
troduction? As for me, my manly spirit 
is beginning to quake at Vandeleur’s rev- 
elations, and some lines of Scott recur 
to my Gothic memory— 

‘** From the chafed tiger rend his prey, 

Bar the fell dragon’s blighting way, 
But shun that lovely snare.’ ” 


Bassett replied, gravely, that he had 
no such motive as Mr. Woodgate gave 
him credit for, but still desired the intro- 
duction. 

“‘“With pleasure,’’ said Vandeleur ; 
“but it will be no use to you. She 
hates me like poison; says I have no 
heart. That is what all ill-tempered 
women say.” 

Notwithstanding his misgivings the 
obliging youth called for writing ma- 
terials, and produced the following 


>. epistle— 


«DEAR Miss SomeRsET—Mr. Richard 


Bassett, a cousin of Sir Charles, wishes 


very much to be introduced to you, and 
has begged me to assist in an object so 
laudable. I should hardly venture to 
present myself, and, therefore, shall feel 
surprised as well as flattered if you will 
receive Mr. Bassett on my introduction, 
and my assurance that he is a respect- 
able country gentleman, and bears no 
resemblance in character to 
; ‘Yours faithfully, 
‘¢ ARTHUR VANDELEUR.”’ 


TEMPTATION. i: a 


Next day Bassett called at Miss Somer- 
set’s house in May Fair, and deliver ed his 
introduction. 

He was admitted after a short delay, 
and entered the lady’s boudoir. It was 
Luxury’s nest. The walls were rose- 
colored satin, padded and puckered ;' the 
voluminous curtains were pale satin, with 
floods and billows of real lace; the’chairs 
embroidered, the tables all buhl and 
ormolu, and the sofas felt like little 
seas. The lady herself, in a delightful 
pelgnoir, sat nestled cozily in a sort of 
ottoman with arms. He finely formed 
hand, clogged with brilliants, was just 
conveying brandy and soda-water to a 
very handsome mouth when Richard 
Bassett entered. 

She raised herself superbly, but with- 
out leaving her seat, and just looked at 
a chair in 4 way that seemed ‘to say, ‘‘I 
permit you to sit down;” and that 
done, she carried the glass to her lips 
with the same admirable firmness of 
hand she showed in driving. Her lofty 
manner, coupled with her beautiful but 
rather haughty features, smacked of im- 
perial origin. Yet she was the writer to 
‘‘jorge,’’ and four years ago a shrimp- 
girl, running into the sea with legs as 
brown as a berry. 

So swiftly does merit rise in this world, 
which, nevertheless, some morose folk 
pretend is a wicked one. 

I ought to explain, however, that this 


haughty reception was partly caused by 


a breach of propriety. Vandeleur ought 
first to have written to her and asked 
permission to present Richard Bassett. 
He had no business to send the man and 
the introduction together. This law a 
Parliament of Sirens had passed, and the 
slightest breach of it was a bitter offense. 
Equilibrium governs the world. These 
ladies were bound to be .overstrict in 
something or other, being: just a little 
lax in certain things where other ladies 
are strict. 

Now Bassett had pondered well what 
he should say, but he was disconcerted 
by her superb presence and demeanor, 
and her large gray eyes, that rested 


steadily upon his face. 


12 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


However, he began to murmur mellif- 
luously. Said he had often seen her in 
public, and admired her, and desired to 
make her acquaintance, etc., etc. 

«Then why did you not ask Sir 
Charles to bring you here?’’ said Miss 
Somerset, abruptly, and searching him 
with her eyes, that were not to say 
bold, but singularly brave, and examiners 
pointblank. 

«“T am not on good terms with Sir 
Charles. He holds the estates that 
ought to be mine; and now he has 
robbed me of my love. He is the last 
man in the world I would ask a favor 
OL. 

“You came here to abuse him behind 
his back, eh?’’ asked the lady with un- 
disguised contempt. 

Bassett winced, but kept his temper. 
““No, Miss Somerset; but you seem to 
think 1 ought to have come to you 
_ through Sir Charles. I would not enter 

your house if I did not feel sure I shall 
not meet him here.”’ 

Miss Somerset looked rather puzzled. 
‘*Sir Charles does not come here every 
day, but he comes now and then, and he 
is always welcome.”’ 

‘* You surprise me.”’ 

“Thank you. Now some of my gen- 
tlemen friends think it is a wonder he 
does not come every minute.”’ 

“You mistake me. 
me is that you are such good friends 
under the circumstances.”’ 

‘Circumstances! what circumstances?’’ 

‘Oh, you know. You are in his ¢on- 
fidence, I presume ? ’’—this rather satiri- 
cally. So the lady answered, defiantly : 

«Yes, I am; he knows I can hold my 
tongue, so he tells me things he‘ tells 
nobody else.”’ 

«Then, if you are in his confidence, 
you know he is about to be married.”’ 

‘‘Married! Sir Charles married !”’ 

‘‘In three weeks.’’ 

““Tt’sa lie! You get out of my house 
this moment! ”’ 

Mr. Bassett colored at this insult. He 
rose from his seat with some little dignity, 
made her a low bow, and retired. But 
her blood was up: she made a wonderful 


What surprises 


rush, sweeping down a chair with her 
dress as she went, and caught him at the © 
door, clutched him by the shoulder and 
half dragged him back, and made him sit 
down again, while she stood opposite him, 
with the knuckles of one hand resting on 
the table. 

‘* Now,’’ said she, panting, ‘* you look 
mein the face and say that again.’’ 

“Excuse me; you punish me too se- 
verely for telling the truth.’’ . 

“Well, I beg your pardon—there. Now 
tell me—this instant. Can’t you speak, 
man?’’ And her knuckles drummed the 
table. 

‘He is to be married in three weeks.”’ 

On te “VWiho wo 2; | 

** A: young lady I love.’’ Y 

‘* Her name ?”’ 

‘¢ Miss Arabella Bruce.”’ 

<< Where does she live? ”’ 

‘Portman Square.”’ 

<‘T’ll stop that marriage.”’ 

‘“How ?’”’ asked Richard, eagerly. 

“*T don’t know; that I’ll think over. 
But he shall not marry her—never ! ”’ 

Bassett sat and looked up with almost 
as much awe as complacency at the fury: 
he had evoked; for this woman was 
really at times a poetic impersonation of 
that fiery passion she was so apt to in- 
dulge. 
pale, her eyes glittering and roving sav- 
agely, and her nostrils literally expand- 
ing, while her tall body quivered with . 
wrath, and her clinched knuckles pat- 
tered on the table. 

“*He shall not marry her. 


V'll kill him 
first | ’’ : 


CHAPTER III. 


RICHARD BASSETT eagerly offered his 
services to break off the obnoxious 
match. But Miss Somerset was begin- 
ning to be mortified at having shown so 
much passion before a stranger. 

‘‘ What have you to do with it ? ’’.said 


she, sharply. 


She stood before him, her cheek . 


A THRRIBLE 


«Everything. I love Miss Bruce.”’ 

‘Oh, yes; I forgot that. Anything 
else? There is, now. I see it in your 
eye. What is it?” 

‘‘Sir Charles’s estates are mine by 
right, and they will return to my line if 
he does not marry and have issue.”’ 

‘¢Oh, I see. That is so like a man. 
It’s always love, and something more 
important, with you. Well, give me 
your address. Jl write if I want you.” 

“Highly flattered,’’ said Bassett, iron- 
ically—wrote his address and left her. 

Miss Somerset then sat down and 
wrote 


‘* DEAR SIR CHARLES—please call here, 
I want to speak to you. 
yours respecfuly, 
‘*RHODA SOMERSET.”’ 


Sir Charles obeyed this missive, and 
the lady received him with a gracious 
and smiling manner, all put on and cat- 
like. She talked with him of indifferent 
things for more than an _ hour, still 
watching to see if he would tell her of 
his own accord. 

When she was quite sure he would not, 
she said, 

““Do you know there’s a ridiculous 
‘report about that you are Sone to be 
married ? ”’ 

“Indeed !”’ 

‘They even tell her name—Miss Bruce. 
Do you know the girl?” — 

Sey 6S. .° 

‘“Is she pretty ?”’ 

“Very.” 

“< Modest ? ”’ 

«Asan angel.’’ 

«‘And are you going to marry her?’’ 

ee-Yes.”’ 

<‘Then you are a-villain.”’ 

“«“ The deuce [am!’’ 

“You are, to abandon a woman who 
has sacrificed all for you.”’ 

Sir Charles looked puzzled, and then 
smiled; but was too polite to give his 
thoughts vent. Nor was it necessary ; 
Miss Somerset, whose brave eyes never 
left the person she was speaking to, fired 
up at the smile alone, and she burst into 


TEMPTATION. 13 
a torrent of remonstrance, not to say 
vituperation. Sir Charles endeavored 
once or twice to stop it, but it was not 
to be stopped ; so at last he quietly took 
up his hat to go. 

He was arrested at the door by a rus- 
tle and a fall. He turned round, and 
there was Miss Somerset lying on her 
back, grinding her white teeth and 
clutching the air. 

He ran to the bell and rang it vio- 
lently, then knelt down and did his best 
to keep her from hurting herself; but, as 
generally happens in these cases, his in- 
terference made her more violent. He 
had hard work to keep her from batter- 
ing her head against the floor, and her 
arms worked like windmills. | 

Hearing the bell tugged so violently, 
a pretty page ran headlong into the room 
—saw—and, without an instant’s dimi- 
nution of speed, described a curve, and 
ran headlong out, screaming ‘“ Polly! 
Bonlyets?? | 

The next moment the housekeeper, an 
elderly woman, trotted in at the door, 
saw her mistress’s condition, and stood 
stock-still, calling, ‘‘ Polly,’’ but with the 
most perfect tranquillity the mind can 
conceive. 

In ran a strapping house-maid, with 
black eyes and brown arms, went down 
on her knees, and said, firmly though re- 
spectfully, ‘‘ Give her me, sir.”’ 

She got behind her struggling mis- 
tress, pulled her up into her own lap, and 
pinned her by the wrists with a vigorous 
grasp. 

The lady struggled, and ground her 
teeth audibly, and flung her arms abroad. 
The maid applied all her rustic strength 
and. harder muscle to hold her within 
bounds. The four arms went to and fro 
in a magnificent struggle, and neither 
could the maid hold the mistress still, 
nor the mistress shake off the maid’s 
grasp, nor strike anything to hurt her- 
Selita 

Sir Charles, thrust out of the ae 
looked on with pity and anxiety, and the 
little page at the door—combining art 
and nature—stuck stock-still in a mili- 
tary attitude, and blubbered aloud. 


14 WORKS 
As for the housekeeper, she remained 
in the middle of the room with folded 
arms, and looked down on the struggle 
with a singular expression of counte- 
nance. There was no agitation what- 
ever, but a sort of thoughtful examina- 
tion, half cynical, half admiring. 

However, as soon as the boy’s sobs 
reached her ear she wakened up, and 
said, tenderly, ‘“‘ What is the child cry- 
ing for? Run and get a basin of water, 
and fling it all over her; that will bring 
her to in a minute.”’ 

The page departed swiftly on this be- 
nevolent errand. 

Then the lady gave a deep sigh, and 
ceased to struggle. 

Next she stared in all their faces, and 
seemed to return to consciousness. 

Next she spoke, but very feebly. ‘* Help 
me up,’’ she sighed. 

Sir Charles and Polly raised her, and 
now there was a marvelous change. The 
vigorous vixen was utterly weak, and 
linp as a wet towel—a woman of jelly. 
As such they handled her, and deposited 
her gingerly on the sofa. 

Now the page ran in hastily with the 
water. Up jumps the poor lax sufferer, 
with flashing eyes: ‘‘ You dare come 
near me with it!’’? Then to the female 
servants: ‘‘Call yourselves women, and 
water my lilac silk, not two hours old ?’’ 
Then to the housekeeper : ‘‘ You old mon- 
ster, you wanted it for your Polly. Get 
out of my sight, the lot!’’ 

Then, suddenly remembering how feeble 
she was, she sank instantly down, and 
turned piteously and languidly to Sir 
Charles. ‘They eat my bread, and rob 
me, and hate me,’’ said she, faintly. 
‘‘T have but one friend on earth.’? She 
leaned tenderly toward Sir Charles as that 
friend ; but before she quite reached him 
she started back, her eyes filled with sud- 
den horror. ‘‘And he forsakes me !’’ she 
cried; and so turned away from him de- 
spairingly, and began to cry bitterly, 
with head averted over the sofa, and one 
hand hanging by her side for Sir Charles 
to take and comfort her. He tried to 
take it. It resisted; and, under cover 
of that little disturbance, the other hand 


OF CHARLES READE. 


dexterously whipped two pins out of her 
hair. The long brown tresses—all her | 
own—fell over her eyes and down to her 
waist, and the picture of distressed beauty 
was complete. 

Even so did the women of antiquity 
conquer male pity—‘‘ solutis crinibus.”’ 

The females interchanged a meaning 
glance, and retired; then the boy fol- 
lowed them with his basin, sore per- 
plexed, but learning life in this admirable 
school. 

Sir Charles then, with the utmost kind- 
ness, endeavored to reconcile the weeping 
and disheveled fair to that separation 
which circumstances rendered necessary. 
But she was inconsolable, and he left the 
house, perplexed and grieved; not but 
what it gratified his vanity a little to find 
himself beloved all in a moment, and the 
Somerset unvixened. He could not help 
thinking how wide must be the circle of 
his charms, which had won the affections 
of two beautiful women so opposite in 
character as Bella Bruce and La Som- 
erset. 

The passion of this latter seemed to 
grow. She wrote to him every day, and 
begged him to call on her. 

She called on him—she who had never 
called on a man before. 

She raged with jealousy; she melted 
with grief. She played on him with all 
a woman’s artillery ; and at last actually 
wrung from him what she called a re- 
prieve. 

Richard Bassett called on her, but she 


would not receive him; so then he wrote 


to her, urging co-operation, and she re- 
plied, frankly, that she took no interest 
in his affairs; but that she was devoted 
to Sir Charles, and should keep him for 
herself. Vanity tempted her to add that 
he (Sir Charles) was with her every day, 
and the wedding postponed. 

This last seemed too good to be true, so 
Richard Bassett set his servant to talk 
to the servants in Portman Square. He 
learned that the wedding was now to be 
on the 15th of June, instead of the 31st of 
May. 

Convinced that this postponement was 
only a blind, and that the marriage would 


A THRRIBLE 


never be, he breathed more freely at the 
news. 

But the fact is, although Sir Charles 
had yielded so far to dread of scandal, he 
was ashamed of himself, and his shame 
became remorse when he detected a fur- 
tive tear in the dove-like eyes of her he 
really loved and esteemed. 

He went and told his trouble to Mr. 
Oldfield. ‘‘I am afraid she will do some- 
thing desperate,’’ he said. 

Mr. Oldfield heard him out, and then 
asked him had he told Miss Somerset 
what he was going to settle on her. 

‘‘Not I. She is not in a condition to 
be influenced by that, at present.” 

‘‘Let me try her. The draft is ready. 
T’ll call on her to-morrow.”’ 

He did call, and was told she did not 
know hin. 

‘You tell her 1am a lawyer, and it is 
very much to her interest to see me,’’ 
said Mr. Oldfield to the page. 

He was admitted, but not to a téte-a- 
téte. Polly was kept in the room. The 
Somerset had peeped, and Oldfield was 
an old fellow, with white hair; if he had 
been a young fellow, with black hair, she 
might have thought that precaution less 
necessary. 

‘‘ Hirst, madam,’’ said Oldfield, ‘‘ I 
must beg you to accept my apologies for 
not coming sooner. Press of business, 
etc.’’ 

‘Why have you come at all? That is 
the question,’’ inquired the lady, bluntly. 

“‘T bring the draft of a deed for your 
approval. Shall I read it to you? ”’ 

“Yes; if it is not very long.”’ 

He began to read it. 

The lady interrupted him characteris- 
tically. 

‘It’s a beastly rigmarole. 
it mean—in three words ? ”’ 

‘«Sir Charles Bassett secures to Rhoda 
Somerset four hundred pounds a year, 
while single; this is reduced to two hun- 
dred if you marry. The deed further 
assigns to you, without reserve, the 
beneficial lease of this house, and all 
the furniture and effects, plate, linen, 
wine, etc.”’ 

“*T see—a Dbribe.”’ 


What does 


TEMPTATION. 15 

‘Nothing of the kind, madam. When 
Sir Charles instructed me to prepare this 
deed he expected no opposition on your 
part to his marriage; but he thought it 
due to him and to yourself to mark his 
esteem for you, and his recollection of 
the pleasant hours he has spent in your 
company.”’ 

Miss Somerset’s eyes searched the law- 
yer’s face. He stood the battery un- 
flinchingly. She altered her tone, and 
asked, politely and almost respectfully, 
whether she might see that paper. 

Mr. Oldfield gave it her. She took it, 
and ran her eye over it; in doing which, 
she raised it so that she could think be- 
hind it unobserved. She handed it back 
at last, with the remark that Sir Charles 
was a gentleman and had done the right 
thing. 

‘“‘He has; and you will do the right 
thing too, will you not?” 

“J don’t know. I am just beginning 
to fall in love with him myself.’’ 

‘‘ Jealousy, madam, not love,’’ said 
the old lawyer. ‘“‘ Come, now! I see 
you are a young lady of rare good sense 3. 
look the thing in the face: Sir Charles is 
a landed gentleman; he must marry, and 
have heirs. He is over thirty, and his 
time has come. He has shown himself 
your friend; why not be his? He has 
given you the means to marry a gentle- 
man of moderate income, or to marry be- 
neath you, if you prefer it—”’ 

«¢ And most of us do—’’ 

‘Then why not make his path smooth ? 
Why distress him with your tears and 
remonstrances ? ”’ 

He continued in this strain for some 
time, appealing to her good sense and 
her better feelings. 

When he had done she said, very quiet- 
ly, ‘‘ How about the ponies and my brown 
mare? Are they down in the deed ? ”’ 

‘TT think not; but if you will do your 
part handsomely [ll guarantee you shall 


| have them.”’ 


“You are a good soul.’’ Then, after 
a pause, ‘‘ Now just you tell me exactly 
what you want me to do for all this.’’ 

Oldfield was pleased with this question. 
He said, ‘“‘Il wish you to abstain from 


16 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


writing to Sir Charles, and him to visit 
you only once more before his marriage, 
just to shake hands and part, with mu- 
tual friendship and good wishes.”’ 

‘You are right,’’ said she, softly; 
“‘best for us both, and only fair to the 
girl. Then, with sudden and eager curl- 
osity, ‘‘Is she very pretty ?”’ . 

‘‘T don’t know.”’ 

‘What, hasn’t he told you ? ”’ 

‘He says she is lovely, and every way 
adorable; but then he is in love. The 
chances are she is not half so handsome 
as yourself.”’ 

<¢ And yet he is in love with her? ’’ 

‘Over head and ears.’’- 

‘¢T don’t believe it. If he was really 
in love with one woman he couldn’t be 
just to another. J couldn’t. He’ll be 
coming back to me in a few months.”’ 

‘¢God forbid ! ’’ 

‘«‘Thank you, old gentleman.”’ 

Mr. Oldfield began to stammer excuses. 
She interrupted him: ‘‘Oh, bother all 
that; I like you none the worse for speak- 
ing your mind.’’ Then, after a pause, 
‘““Now excuse me; but suppose Sir 
Charles should change his mind, and 
never sign this paper ? ”’ 

‘<T pledge my professional credit.”’ 

‘*That is enough, sir; I see I can trust 
you. Well, then, I consent to break off 
with Sir Charles, and only see him once 
more—as a friend. Poor Sir Charles! I 
hope he will be happy ’”’ (she squeezed 
out a tear for him)—‘‘ happier than I am. 
And when he does come he can sign the 
deed, you know.”’ 

Mr. Oldfield left her, and joined Sir 
Charles at Long’s, as had been previously 
agreed. 

“Tt is all right, Sir Charles; she is a 
sensible girl, and will give you no further 
 trouble.’’ 

“How did you get over the hyster- 
igs 7%’ 

“We dispensed with them. She saw 
at once it was to be business, not senti- 
ment. You are to pay her one more 
visit, to sign, and part friends. If you 
please, I’ll make that appointment with 
both parties, as soon as the deed is en- 
grossed. Oh, by-the-by, she did shed a 


tear or two, but she dried them to ask me 
for the ponies and the brown mare.”’ 

Sir Charles’s vanity was mortified. 
But he laughed it off, and said she should 
have them, of course. 

So now his mind was at.ease, his con- 
science was at rest, and he could give 
his whole time where he had given his 
heart. 

Richard Bassett learned, through his 
servant, that the wedding-dresses were 
ordered. He called on Miss Somerset. 
She was out. 

Polly opened the door and gave him a 
look of admiration—due to his fresh color 
—that encouraged him to try and enlist 
her in his service. 

He questioned her, and she told him in 
a general way how matters were going. 
“ But,’”’ said she, ‘‘why not come and 
talk to her yourself? Ten to one but 
she tells you. She is pretty outspoken.”’ 

“My pretty dear,’’ said Richard, ‘‘ she 
never will receive me.”’ 

‘Oh, but T’ll make her !’’ said Polly. 

And she did exert her influence as fol- 
lows: 

‘« Lookee here, the cousin’s a-coming to- 
morrow, and I’ve been and promised he 
should see you.” 

‘< What did you do that for ?”’ 

‘““ Why, he’s a well-looking chap, and 
a beautiful color, fresh from the country, 
like me. And he’s a gentleman, and got 
an estate belike; and why not put yourn 
to hisn, and so marry him and be a lady? 
You might have me about ye all the 
same, till my turn comes.”’ 

‘“No, no,’ said Rhoda; “ that’s not 
the man for me. If ever 1 marry, it must 
be one of my own sort, or else a fool, like 
Marsh, that I can make a slave of.”’ 

“Well, any way, you must see him, 
not to make a fool of me, for I did 
promise him; which, now I think on’t, 
twas very good of me, for I could find 
in my heart to ask him down into the 
kitchen, instead of bringing him upstairs 
to you.”’ 

All this ended, somehow, in Mr. Bas- 
sett’s being admitted. 

To his anxious inquiry how matters 
stood, she replied coolly that Sir Charles 


vm 


‘“ AND HE FORSAKES ME!’’ SHE CRIED. 
—A Terrible Temptation, Chapter III. 


ReapDeE, Volume Eight. 


cl 


A TERRIBLE 


and herself were parted by mutual con- 
sent. 

‘«‘What! after all your protestations ? ”’ 
said Bassett, bitterly. 

But Miss Somerset was not in an iras- 
cible humor just then. She shrugged 
her shoulders, and said : 

‘“Yes, I remember I put myself in a 
passion, and said some ridiculous things. 
But one can’t be always a fool. I have 
come to my senses. This sort of thing 
always does end, you know. Most of 
them part enemies, but he and I part 
friends and well-wishers.”’ 


‘And you throw me over as if I! 


99 


was nobody,’’ said Richard, white with 
anger. 

‘«“ Why, what are you to me? ”’ said the 
Somerset. ‘‘Oh, I see. You thought to 
make a cat’s-paw of me. Well, you won’t, 
then.’’ 

‘¢In other words, you have been bought 
off.” 

eNO, ot have. not. .lLoamunot.to be 
bought by anybody—and I am not to be 
insulted by you, you ruffian! How dare 
you come here and affront a lady in her 
own house—a lady whose shoestrings 
your betters are ready to tie, you brute ? 
If you want to be a Janded proprietor, go 
and marry some ugly old hag that’s got 
it, and no eyesight left to see you’re no 
gentleman. Sir Charles’s land you’ll 
never have; a better man has got it, 
and means to keep it for him and his. 
Here, Polly ! Polly ! Polly ! take this man 
‘down to the kitchen, and teach him man- 
hers if you can: he is not fit for my 
drawing-room, by a long chalk.”’ - 

Polly arrived in time to see the flashing 
eyes, the swelling veins, and to hear the 
fair orator’s peroration. 

‘“What, you are in your tantrums 
again!’’? said she. ‘‘Come along, sir. 
Needs must when the devil drives. You’ll 
break a blood-vessel some day, my lady, 
like your father afore ye.’’ 

And with this homely suggestion, which 
‘always sobered Miss Somerset, and, in- 
-deed, frightened her out of her wits, she 
withdrew the offender. 

She did not take him into the kitchen, 
but into the dining-room, and there he 


TEMPTATION. 17 
had a long talk with her, and gave her a 
sovereign. 

She promised to inform him if anything 
important should occur. 

He went away, pondering and scowling 
deeply. 


CHAPTER IV. 


Str CHARLES BASSETT was now living 
in Elysium. Never was rake more thor- 
oughly transformed. Every day he sat 
for hours at the feet of Bella Bruce, ad- 
miring her soft, feminine ways and virgin 
modesty even more than her beauty. And 
her visible blush whenever he appeared 
suddenly, and the soft commotion and 
yielding in her lovely frame whenever he 
drew near, betrayed his magnetic influ- 
ence, and told all but the blind she 
adored him. 

She would decline all invitations to dine 
with ~him and her father—a _ strong- 
minded old admiral, whose authority 
was unbounded, only, to Bella’s regret, 
very rarely exerted. Nothing would have 
pleased her more than to be forbidden 
this and commanded that; but no! the 
admiral was a lion with an enormous 
paw, only he could not be got to put it 
into every ple. 

In this charming society the hours 
glided, and the wedding-day drew close. 
So deeply and sincerely was Sir Charles 
in love that when Mr. Oldfield’s letter 
came, appointing the day and hour to 
sign Miss Somerset’s deed, he was unwill- 
ing to go, and wrote back to ask if the 
deed could not be sent to his house. 

Mr. Oldfield replied that the parties to 
the deed and the witnesses must meet, 
and it would be unadvisable, for several 
reasons, to irritate the lady’s susceptibil- 
ity previous to signature; the appoint- 
ment having been made at her house, it 
had better remain so. 

That day soon came. 


18 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


Sir Charles, being due in Mayfair at 
2P.M., compensated himself for the less 
agreeable business to come by going 
earlier than usual to Portman Square. 
By this means he caught Miss Bruce and 
two other young ladies inspecting bridal 
dresses. Bella blushed and looked asham- 
ed, and, to the surprise of her friends, 
sent the dresses away, and set herself to 
talk rationally with Sir Charles—as ra- 
tionally as lovers can. 

The ladies took the cue, and retired in 
disgust. 

Sir Charles apologized. 

‘«‘This is too bad of me. I come at an 
unheard-of hour, and frighten away your 
fair friends ; but the fact is, I have an ap- 
pointment at two, and I don’t know how 
long they will keep me, so I thought I 
would make sure of two happy hours at 
the least.”’ | 

And delightful hours they were. Bella 
Bruce, excited by this little surprise, 
leaned softly on his shoulder, and prat- 
tled her maiden love like some warbling 
fountain. 

Sir Charles, transfigured by love, an- 
swered her in kind—three months ago he 
could not—and they compared pretty lt- 
tle plans of wedded life, and had small 
differences, and ended by agreeing. 

Complete and prompt accord upon two 
points: first, they would not have a sin- 
gle quarrel, like other people; their love 
should never lose its delicate bloom; sec- 
ond, they would grow old together, and 
die the same day—the same minute if 
possible; if not, they must be content 
with the same day, but, on that, inexo- 
rable. 

But soon after this came a skirmish. 
Each wanted to obey t’other. 

Sir Charles argued that Bella was bet- 
ter than he, and therefore more fit to 
conduct the pair. 

Bella, who thought him divinely good, 
pounced on this reason furiously. He de- 
fended it. He admitted, with exemplary 
candor, that he was good now—“ awfully 
good.’’ But he assured her that he had 
been anything but good until he knew 
her; now she had been always good; 
therefore, he argued, as his goodness 


came originally from her, for her to obey 
him would be a little too much like the 
moon commanding the sun. 

‘That is too ingenious for me, Charles, 4 
said Bella. ‘And, for shame!’ Nobody 
was ever so good as you are. I look up 
to you and— Now I could stop your 
mouth in a minute. I have only to re- 
mind you that I shall swear at the altar 
to obey you, and you will not swear to 
obey me. But I will not crush you under 
the Prayer-book—no, dearest; but, in- 
deed, to obey is a want of my nature, and 
I marry you to supply that want: and 
that’s a story, for I marry you because I 
love and honor and worship and adore 
you to distraction, my own —own—own !”’ 
With this she flung herself passionately, 
yet modestly, on his shoulder, and, being 
there, murmured, coaxingly, ‘* You wall 
let me obey you, Charles ? ”’ 

Thereupon Sir Charles felt highly gelati- 
nous, and lost, for the moment, all power 
of resistance or argument. 

“Ah, you will; and then you will re- 
mind me of my dear mother. She knew 
how to command; but as for poor dear 
papa, he is very disappointing. In select- 
ing an admiral for my parent, I made sure 
of being ordered about. Instead of that 
—now I’ll show you—there he is in the 
next room, inventing a new system of 
signals, poor dear—’’ 

She threw the folding-doors open. 

** Papa dear, shall I ask Charles to din- 
ner to-day ? ”’ 

‘As you please, my dear.”’ 

“Do you think I had better walk or 
ride this afternoon?” 

‘* Whichever vou prefer.”’ 

‘‘There,’’ said Bella, “‘I told you so. 
That is always the way. Papa dear, you 
used always to be firing guns at sea. Do, 
please, fire one in this house—just one— 
before I leave it, and make the very win- 
dows rattle.”’ 

‘“‘T beg your pardon, Bella; I never 
wasted powder at sea. If the convoy 
sailed well and steered right I never 
barked at them. You are a modest, sen- 
sible girl, and have always steered a good 
course. Why should I hoist a petticoat. 
and play the small tyrant? Wait till I 


A TERRIBLE 


see you going to do something wrong or 
silly.’’ 

“Ah! then you would fire a gun, 
papa ?”’ 

‘¢Ay, a broadside.”’ 

«“ Well, that is something,’’ said Bella, 
as she closed the door softly. 

“No, no; it amounts to just nothing,’’ 
said Sir Charles ; ‘‘for you never will do 
anything wrong or silly. T]l accommo- 
date you. I have thought of away. I 
shall give you some blank cards; you 
shall write on them, ‘I think I should like 
to do so and so.’ You shall be careless, 
and leave them about; I’ll find them, and 
bluster, and say, ‘I command you to do 
so and so, Bella Bassett ’“—the very thing 
on the card, you know.”’ 

Bella colored to the brow with pleasure 
and modesty. After a pause she said: 
““How sweet! The worst of it is, I 
should get my own way. Now what lI 
want is to submit my will to yours. A 
gentle tyrant—that is what you must be 
to Bella Bassett. Oh, you sweet, sweet, 
for calling me that! ”’ 

These projects were interrupted by a 
servant announcing luncheon. 

This made Sir Charles look hastily at 
his watch, and he found it was past two 
o’clock. 

‘“*How time flies in this house!’’ said 
he. “I must go, dearest; I am behind 
my appointment already. What do you 
do this afternoon ? ”’ 

<‘ Whatever you please, my own.”’ 

“T could get away by four.”’ 

««Then I will stay at home for you.”’ 

He left her reluctantly, and she fol- 
lowed him to the head of the stairs, and 
hung over the balusters as if she would 
like to fly after him. 

He turned at the street-door, saw that 
radiant and gentle face beaming after 
him, and they kissed hands to each other 
by one impulse, as if they were parting 
for ever so long. 

He had gone scarcely half an hour 
when a letter, addressed to her, was left 
at the door by a private messenger. 

‘‘Any answer?’ inquired the _ serv- 
ant. 

€é No.’’ 


TEMPTATION. 19 
The letter was sent up, and delivered 
to her on a silver salver. 
She opened it; it was a thing new to 
her in her young life—an anonymous 
letter. 


** Miss BRucE—I am almost a stranger 
to you, but I know your character from 
others, and cannot bear to see you 
abused. You are said to be about to 
marry Sir Charles Bassett. I think you 
can hardly be aware that he is connected 
with a lady of doubtful repute, called 
Somerset, and neither your beauty nor 
your virtue has prevailed to detach him 
from that connection. 

“Tf,on engaging himself to you, he 
had abandoned her, 1 should not have 
said a word. But the truth is, he visits 
her constantly, and I blush to say that 
when he leaves you this day it will be to 
spend the afternoon at her house. 

“JT inclose you her address, and you can 
learn in ten minutes whether 1 am a 
slanderer or, what I wish to be, 

‘<A FRIEND OF INJURED INNOCENCE.” 


CHAPTER V. 


Str CHARLES was behind his time in 
Mayfair; but the lawyer and his clerk 
had not arrived, and Miss Somerset was 
not visible. 

She appeared, however, at last, in a 
superb silk dress, the. broad luster of 
which would have been beautiful, only 
the effect was broken and frittered away 
by six rows of gimp and fringe. But 
why blame her? This is a blunder in art 
aS universal as it is amazing, when one 
considers the amount of apparent thought 
her sex devotes to dress. They might 
just as well score a fair plot of velvet 
turf with rows of box, or tattoo a bloom- 
ing and downy cheek. 

She held out her hand, like a man, and 


20 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


talked to Sir Charles on indifferent top- | 


ics, till Mr. Oldfield arrived. She then 
retired into the background, and left the 
gentlemen to discuss the deed. When 
appealed to, she evaded direct replies, 
and put on languid and imperial indiffer- 
ence. When she signed, it was with the 
air of some princess bestowing a favor 
upon solicitation. 

But the business concluded, she thawed 
all in a moment, and invited the gentle- 
men to luncheon with charming cordial- 
ity. Indeed, her genuine bonhomvie after 
her affected indifference was rather comic. 
Everybody was content. Champagne 
flowed. The lady, with her good mother- 
wit, kept conversation going till the law- 
yer was nearly missing his next appoint- 
ment. He hurried away; and Sir Charles 
only lingered, out of good-breeding, to 
bid Miss Somerset good-by. In the 
course of leave-taking he said he was 
sorry he left her with people about her of 
whom he had a bad opinion. ‘‘ Those 
women have no more feeling for you than 
stones. When you lay in convulsions, 
your housekeeper looked on as _ philo- 
sophically as if you had been two kittens 
at play—you and Polly.” 

‘<T saw her.’’ 

‘“‘Indeed! You appeared hardly in a 
condition to see anything.”’ 

“TI did, though, and heard the old 
wretch tell the young monkey to water 
my lilac dress. That was to get it for 
her Polly. She knew I’d never wear it 
afterward.”’ 

<«¢Then why don’t you turn her off ? ”’ 

‘“¢ Who’d take such a useless old hag, if 
I turned her off? ”’ 

‘“‘ You carry a charity a long way.’’ 

“‘T carry everything. What’s the use 
doing things by halves, good or bad ?”’ 

“ Well, but that Polly! She is young 
enough to get her living elsewhere; and 
she is extremely disrespectful to you.”’ 

“That she is. If Il wasn’t a lady, I’d 
have given her a good hiding this very 
day for her cheek !”’ 

‘Then why not turn her off this very 
day for her cheek ? ”’ 

“Well, Ill tell you, since youand I are 
parted forever. No, I don’t like.’’ 


“Oh, come! No secrets between 
friends.”’ 

“Well, then, the old hag is— my 
mother.”’ 

What 

‘‘ And the young jade—is my sister.”’ 

‘‘Good Heavens! ”’ 

‘*And the page—is my little brother.’’ 

el a bY) 02 5-16 19 ig 

‘‘What, you are not angry ?”’ 

‘Angry reno; Ha, ha,snate- 

‘“See what a hornets’ nest you have es- 
caped from. My dear friend, those two 
women rob me through thick and thin. 
They steal my handkerchiefs, and my 
gloves, and my very linen. They drink 
my wine like fishes. They’d take the hair 
off my head, if it wasn’t fast by the roots 
—for a wonder.”’ 

“Why not give them a ten-pound note 
and send them home ? ”’ 

‘“They’d pocket the note, and blacken 
me in our village. That was why I had 
them up here. First time I went home, 
after running about with that little 
scamp, Vandeleur—do you know him ?”’ 

«“T have not the honor.”’ . 

‘Then your luck beats mine. One 


thing, he is going to the dogs as fast as 


he can. Some day he’ll come: begging to 
me for a fiver. You mark my words 
now.”’ 


“Well, but you were saying—’’ 

«Yes, I went off about Van. Polly 
says Vve a mind like running water. 
Well, then, when I went home the first 
time—after Van, mother and Polly raised 
a virtuous howl. ‘ All right,’ said I—for, 
of course, I know how much virtue there 
is under thezr skins. Virtue of the low- 
er orders! Tell that to gentlefolks that 
don’t know them. Ido. I’ve been one 
of *em—‘ I know all about that,’ says I. 
‘You want to share the plunder, that is 
the sense of your virtuous cry.’ SoIhad 
°em up here; and then there was no more 
virtuous howling, but a deal of virtuous 
thieving, and modest drinking, and pure- 
minded selling of my street-door to the 
highest male bidder. And they will cor- 
rupt the boy; and if they do, I’ll cut 
their black hearts out with my riding- 
whip. But I suppose I must keep them 


A THRRIBLE 


on; they are my own flesh and blood ; 
and if I was to be ill and dying, they’d 
do all they knew to keep me alive—for 
their own sakes. I’m their milch cow, 
these country innocents.’’ 

Sir Charles groaned aloud, and said, 
‘“My poor girl, you deserve a better fate 
than this. Marry some honest fellow, 
and cut the whole thing.’’ 

“T’ll see about it. You try it first, 
and let us see how you like it.”’ 

And so they parted gayly. 

In the hall, Polly intercepted him, all 
smiles. He looked at her, smiled in his 
sleeve, and gave her a handsome present. 

‘‘Tf you please, sir,’’ said she, “‘an old 
gentleman called for you.” 

(< Wihen? 4? 

“About an hour ago. Leastways, he 
asked if Sir Charles Bassett was there. 
I said yes, but you ,wouldn’t see no 
one.”’ 

“Who could it be? Why, surely you 
_ never told anybody I was to be here to- 
day ?’’ 

iideenore sir how .could..1? 
Polly, with a face of brass. 

Sir Charles thought this very odd, and 
felt even a little uneasy about it. All 
the way to Portman Square he puzzled 
over it; and at last he was driven to the 
conclusion that Miss Somerset had been 
weak enough to tell some person, male or 
female, of the coming interview, and so 
somebody had called there—doubtless to 
ask him a favor. 

At five o’clock he reached Portman 
Square, and was about to enter, as a mat- 
ter of course; but the footman stopped 
him. ‘I beg pardon, Sir Charles,’’ said 
the man, looking pale ‘and agitated ; 
“but I have strict orders. My young 
lady is very ill.”’ 

“Til! Let me go to her this in- 
stant.”’ 

‘<1 daren’t, Sir Charles, 1 daren’t. . I 
know you are a gentleman; pray don’t 
lose me my place. You would never get 
to see her. We none of us know the 
rights, but there’s something up. Sorry 
to say it, Sir Charles, but we have strict 
orders not to admit you. Haven’t you 
got the admiral’s letter, sir? ”’ 


said 


TEMPTATION. 21 

‘No; what letter ? ”’ 

‘* He has been after you, sir ; and when 
he came back he sent Roger off to your 
house with a letter.”’ 

A cold chill began to run down Sir 
Charles Bassett. He hailed a passing 
hansom, and drove to his own house to 
get the admiral’s letter; and as he went 
he asked himself, with chill misgivings, 
what on earth had happened. 

What had happened shall be told the 
reader precisely but briefly. 

In the first place, Bella had opened the 
anonymous letter and read its contents, 
to which the reader is referred. 

There are people who pretend to despise 
anonymous letters. Pure delusion ! they 
know they ought to, and so fancy they 
do; but they don’t. The absence of a 
signature gives weight, if the letter is 
ably written and seems true. 

As for poor Bella Bruce, a dove’s bosom 
is no more fit to rebuff a poisoned arrow 
than she was to combat that foulest and 
direst of all a miscreant’s weapons, an 
anonymous letter. She,in her goodness 
and innocence, never dreamed that any 
person she did not know could possibly 
tell a lie to wound her. The letter fell on 
her like a cruel revelation from heaven. 

The blow was so savage that, at first, - 
it stunned her. 

She sat pale and stupefied ; but beneath 
the stupor were the rising throbs of com- 
ing agonies. 

After that horrible stupor her anguish 
grew and grew, till it found vent in a 
miserable cry, rising, and rising, and ris- 
ing, In agony. 

‘‘Mamma! mamma! mamma!’’ 

Yes; her mother had been dead these 
three years, and her father sat in the next 
room; yet, in her anguish, she cried to 
her mother—a cry the which, if your 
mother had heard, she would have ex- 
pected Bella’s to come to her even from 
the grave. 

Admiral Bruce heard this fearful ery— 
the living calling on the dead—and burst 
through the folding-doors in a moment, 
white as a ghost. 

He found his daughter writhing on the 
sofa, ghastly, and grinding in her hand 


a2 


the cursed paper that had poisoned her 
young life. 

‘‘My child! my child !”’ 

‘‘Oh, papa! see! see!’’? And she tried 
to open the letter for him, but her hands 
trembled so she could not. 

He kneeled down by her side, the stout 
old warrior, and read the letter, while 
she clung to him, moaning now, and 
quivering all over from head to foot. 

‘‘Why, there’s no signature! The 
writer is a coward and, perhaps, a liar. 
Stop! he offers a test. Vl put him to it 
this minute.”’ 

He laid the moaning girl on the sofa, 
ordered his servants to admit nobody into 
the house, and drove at once to Mayfair. 

He called at Miss Somerset’s house, 
saw Polly, and questioned her. 

He drove home again, and came into 
the drawing-room looking as he had been 
seen to look when fighting his ship; but 
his daughter had never seen him so. 
“My girl,’’ said he, solemnly, ‘‘ there’s 
nothing for you to do but to be brave, 
and hide. your grief as well as you can, 
for the man is unworthy of your love. 
That coward spoke the truth. He is 
there at this moment.”’ | 

“Oh, papa! papa! let me die! 
_world is too wicked for me. Let 
die 1?’ 

“Die for an unworthy object? For 
shame! Go to your own room, my girl, 
and pray to your God to help you, since 
your mother has left us. Oh, how I miss 
her now! Go and pray, and let no one 
else know what we suffer. Be your fa- 
ther’s daughter. Fight and pray.” 

Poor Bella had no longer to complain 
that she was not commanded. She kissed 
him, and burst into a great passion of 
weeping ; but he led her to the door, and 
she tottered to her own room, a blighted 
girl, 

The sight of her was harrowing. Un- 
der its influence the admiral dashed off a 
letter to Sir Charles, calling him a villain, 
and inviting him to go to France and let 
an indignant father write scoundrel on 
his carcass. 

But when he had written this his good 
sense and dignity prevailed over his fury ; 


The 
me 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


he burned the letter, and wrote another. 
This he sent by hand to Sir Charles’s 
house, and ordered his servants — but 
that the reader knows. 

Sir Charles found the admiral’s letter 
in his letter-rack. It ran thus: 


‘““Str—We have learned your connec- 
tion with a lady named Somerset, and I 
have ascertained that you went from my 
daughter to her house this very day. 

‘* Miss Bruce and myself withdraw from 
all connection with you, and I must re- 
quest you to attempt no communication 
with her of any kind. Such an attempt 
would be an additional insult. 

‘Tam, sir, your obedient servant, 

“* JOHN URQUHART BRUCE.”’ 


At first Sir Charles Bassett was stunned 
by this blow. Then his mind resisted the 
admiral’s severity, and he was indignant 
at being dismissed for so common an 
offense. This gave way to deep grief and 
shame at the thought of Bella and her lost 
esteem. But soon all other feelings 
merged for a time in fury at the heart- 
less traitor who had destroyed his happi- 
ness, and had dashed the cup of innocent 
love from his very lips. Boiling over 
with mortification and rage, he drove at 


| once to that traitor’s house. Polly opened 


the door. He rushed past her, and burst 
into the dining-room, breathless, and 
white with passion. | 

He found Miss Somerset studying the 
deed by which he had made her indépend- 
ent for life. She started at his strange 
appearance, and instinctively put both 
hands flat upon the deed. 

«You vile wretch! ”’ cried Sir Charles. 
““You heartless monster! Enjoy your 
work.’’ And he flung her the admiral’s 
letter. But he did not wait while she 
read it; he heaped reproaches on her ; 
and, for the first time in her life, she did 
not reply in kind. 

“Are you mad?” she faltered. ‘‘ What 
have I done? ”’ 

‘You have told Admiral Bruce.’’ 

‘*That’s false.’’ 

“You told him I was to be here to- 
day.”’ 


A TERRIBLE 


‘‘Charles, I never did. Believe me.”’ 
“You did. Nobody knew it but you. 
He was here to-day at the very hour.”’ 


‘‘ May I never get up alive off this chair | 


if [told asoul. Yes, our Polly. Vllring 
for her.”’ 

‘“No, you will not. She is your sister. 
Do you think [ll take the word of such 
reptiles against the plain fact? Youhave 
parted my love and me—parted us on the 
very day I had made you independent for 
life. An innocent love was waiting to 
bless me, and an honest love was in your 
power, thanks to me, your kind, forgiving 
friend and benefactor. I have heaped 
kindness on you from the first moment I 
had the misfortune to know you. I con- 
nived at your infidelities—”’ — 

“Charles! Don’t say that. 
was.” 

‘‘T indulged your most expensive 
whims, and, instead of leaving you 
with a curse, as all the rest did that 
ever knew you, and as you deserve, I 
bought your consent to lead a respectable 
life, and be blessed with a virtuous love. 
You took the bribe, but robbed me of the 
blessing — viper! You have destroyed 
me, body and soul—monster! perhaps 
blighted her happiness as well; you she- 
devils hate an angel worse than Heaven 
hates you. But you shall suffer with us; 
not your heart, for you have none, but 
your pocket. You have broken faith 
with me, and sent all my happiness to 
hell; UVll send your deed to hell after 
it!’? With this, he flung himself upon 
the deed, and was going to throw it into 
the fire. Now up tothat moment she had 
been overpowered by this man’s fury, 
whom she had never seen the least 
angry before; but when he laid hands 
on her property it acted like an electric 
Shock. ‘‘No! no!’ she screamed, and 
sprang at him like a wildcat. 

Then ensued a violent and unseemly 
struggle all about the room ; chairs were 
upset, and vases broken to pieces; and 
the man and woman dragged each other 
to and fro, one fighting for her property, 
as if it was her life, and the other for re- 
venge. | 

Sir Charles, 


I never 


excited by fury, was 


TEMPTATION. 23 
stronger than himself, and at last shook 
off one of her hands for a moment, and 
threw the deed into the fire. She tried to 
break from him and save it, but he held 
her like iron. 

Yet not for long. While he was hold- 
ing her back, and she straining every 
nerve to get to the fire, he began to 
show sudden symptoms of distress. He 
gasped loudly, and cried, ‘‘Oh! oh! I’m 
choking !’’ and then his clutch relaxed. 
She tore herself from it, and, plung- 
ing forward, rescued the smoking parch- 
ment. 

At that moment she heard a great 
stagger behind her, and a pitiful moan, 
and Sir Charles fell heavily, striking his 
head against the edge of the sofa. She 
looked round as she knelt, and saw him, 
black in the face, rolling his eyeballs 
fearfully, while his teeth gnashed aw- 
fully, and a little jet of foam flew through 
his lips. 

Then she shrieked with terror, and the 
blackened deed fell from her hands. At 
this moment Polly rushed into the room. 
She saw the fearful sight, and echoed her 
sister’s scream. But they were neither 
of them women to lose their heads and 
beat the air with their hands. They got 
to him, and both of them fought hard 
with the unconscious sufferer, whose body, 
in a fresh convulsion, now bounded away 
from the sofa, and bade fair to batter it- 
self against the ground. 

They did all they could to hold him with 
one arm apiece, and to release his swelling 
throat with the other. Their nimble fin- 
gers whipped off his neck-tie in a mo- 
ment ; but the distended windpipe pressed 
so against the shirt-button they could 
not undo it. Then they seized the col- 
lar, and, pulling against each other, 
wrenched the shirt open so powerfully 
that the button flew into the air, and 
tinkled against a mirror a long way off. 

A few more struggles, somewhat less 
violent, and then the face, from purple, 
began to whiten, the eyeballs fixed; the 
pulse went down; the man lay still. 

“Oh, my God!” cried Rhoda Somer- 
set. ‘“‘Heisdying! To the nearest doc- 
tor! There’s one three doors off. No 


24 WORKS 


bonnet! It’s life and death this moment. 
Bly ) 

Polly obeyed, and Doctor Andrews 
was actually in the room within five 
minutes. 

He looked grave, and kneeled down by 
the patient, and felt his pulse anxiously. 

Miss Somerset sat down, and, being 
from the country, though she did not look 
it, began to weep bitterly, and rock her- 
self in rustic fashion. 

The doctor questioned her kindly, and 
she told him, between her sobs, how Sir 
Charles had been taken. 

The doctor, however, instead of being 
alarmed by those frightful symptoms she 
related, took a more cheerful view di- 
rectly. ‘Then do not alarm yourself 
unnecessarily,’ hesaid. ‘It wasonly an 
epileptic fit.”’ 

*“Only !’’? sobbed Miss Somerset. ‘‘ Oh, 
if you had seen him! And he lies like 
death.’’ 

‘‘ Yes,’’ said Dr. Andrews; ‘“‘a, severe 
epileptic fit is really a terrible thing to 
look at; but it is not dangerous in pro- 
portion. Is he used to have them ? ”’ 

‘Oh, no, doctor—never had one be- 
fore.”’ 

Here she was mistaken, I think. 

«You must keep him quiet; and give 
him a moderate stimulant as soon as he 
can swallow comfortably ; the quietest 
room in the house; and don’t let him be 
hungry, night or day. Have food by his 
bedside, and watch him for a day or two. 
T’ll come again this evening.”’ 

The doctor went to his dinner—tran- 
quil. 

Not so those he left. Miss Somerset 
resigned her own luxurious bedroom, and 
had the patient laid, just as he was, upon 
her bed. She sent the page out to her 
groom and ordered two loads of straw to 
be laid before the door; and she watched 
by the sufferer, with brandy and water 
by her side. 

Sir Charles now might have seemed to 
be in a peaceful slumber, but for his eyes. 
They were open, and showed more white, 
and less pupil, than usual. 

However, in time he began to sigh and 
move, and even mutter; and, gradually, 


OF CHARLES READE. 


some little color came back to his pale 
cheeks. 

Then Miss Somerset had the good sense 
to draw back out of his sight, and order 
Polly to take her place by his side. Polly 
did so, and, some time afterward, at a 
fresh order, put a teaspoonful of brandy 
to his lips, which were still pale and even 
bluish. 

The dector returned, and brought his 
assistant. They put the patient to bed. 

‘His life is in no danger,”’ said he. “I 
wish I was as sure about his reason.” 


At one o’clock in the morning, as Polly 
was snoring by the patient’s bedside, a 
hand was laid on her shoulder. It was 
Rhoda. 

‘“‘Go to bed, Polly: you are no use 
here.”’ 

‘“You’d be sleepy if you worked as hard 
as I do.”’ 

“Very likely,’’ said Rhoda, with a gen- 
tleness that struck Polly as very singular. 
** Good-night.’”’ 

Rhoda spent the night watching, and 
thinking harder than she had ever thought 
before. 

Next morning, early, Polly came into 
the sick-room. There sat her sister watch- 
ing the patient, out of sight. 

‘‘La, Rhoda! Have you sat there all 


night ? ”’ 
“Yes. Don’t speak so loud. Come 
here. You’ve set your heart’ on this 


lilachisilk ier} 
black merino.”’ 

““Not you, my lady; you are not so 
fond of mereeny, nor of me neither.”’ 

“I’m not a liar like you,’’ said the 
other, becoming herself for a moment, 
‘and what I say Pll do. You put out 
your merino for me in the dressing-room.”’ 

“* Allvight,’’ said Polly, joyfully. 

“And bring me two buckets of water 
instead of one. I have never closed my 
eyes.”’ 

‘*Poor soul! and now you be going to 
sluice yourself all the same. Whatever 
you can see in cold water, to run after it 
so, I can’t think. If I was to flood my- 
self like you, it would soon float me to 
my long home.’’ 


give it to you,for your 


A TERRIBLE 


‘How do you know? You never gave 
it a trial. Come, no more chat. Give 
me my bath: and then you may wash 
yourself in a tea-cup if you like—only 
don’t wash my spoons in the same water, 
for mercy’s sake !”’ 

Thus affectionately stimulated in her 
duties, Polly brought cold water galore, 
and laid out her new merino dress. In 
this sober suit, with plain linen collar and 
cuffs, the Somerset dressed herself, and 
resumed her watching by the bedside. 
She kept more than ever out of sight, for 
the patient was now beginning to mutter 
incoherently, yet in a way that showed 
his clouded faculties were dwelling on the 
calamity which had befallen him. 

About noon the bell was rung sharply, 
and, on Polly entering, Rhoda called her 
to the window and showed her two female 
figures plodding down the street. ‘“‘Look,”’ 
said she. ‘‘ Those are the only women I 
envy. Sisters of Charity. Run you after 
them, and take a good look at those 
beastly ugly caps: then come and tell 
me how to make one.’’ 

‘‘Here’s a go!’ said Polly; but exe- 
cuted the commission promptly. 

It needed no fashionable milliner to turn 
a yard of linen into one of those ugly 
caps, which are beautiful banners of 
Christian charity and womanly tender- 
ness to the sick and suffering. The mon- 
ster cap was made in an hour, and Miss 
Somerset put it on, and a thick veil, and 
then she no longer thought it necessary 
to sit out of the patient’s sight. 

The consequence was that, in the mid- 
dle of his ramblings, he broke off and 
looked at her. The sister puzzled him. 
At last he called to her in French. 

She made no reply. © 

«Je suis a ’hopital, n’est ce pas bonne 
sceur ?’’ 

‘‘Y am English,”’ said she, softly. 


CHAPTER VI. 


‘¢ ENGLISH !’’ said Sir Charles. 
tell me, how did I come here? 
AL 2.77 


[Stn On) 
W here 


TEMPTATION. 25 
“You had a fit, and the doctor ordered 
you to be kept quiet; and I am here to 
nurse you.’’ 

‘SA fit! 
woman !’’ 

‘*Don’t think of her: give your mind 
to getting well : remember, there is some- 
body who would break her heart if 
you—”’ 

“Oh, my poor Bella! my sweet, timid, 
modest, loving Bella!’’ He was so weak- 
ened that he cried like a child. 

Miss Somerset rose, and laid her fore- 
head sadly upon the window-sill. 

‘Why do I cry for her, like a great 
baby ?’’ muttered Sir Charles. ‘She 
wouldn’t cry for me. She has cast me 
off in a moment.”’ 

‘Not she. It is her father’s doing. 
Have a little patience. The whole thing 
shall be explained to them; and then she 
will soon soften the old man. It is not as 
if you were really to blame.”’ 

“*No more I was. It is all that vile 
woman.”’ 

“*Oh, don’t! She is so sorry ; she has 
taken it all to heart. She had once 
shammed a fit, on the very place; and 
when you had a real fit there—on the 
very spot—oh, it was so fearful—and lay 
like one dead, she saw God’s finger, and 
it touched her hard heart. Don’t say 
anything more against her just now. 
She is trying so hard to be good. And, 
besides, it is all a mistake: she never told 
that old admiral; she never breathed a 
word out of her own house. Her own 
people have betrayed her and you. She 
has made me promise two things: to find 
out who told the admiral, and—’’ 

oe VWrellsas 

‘¢The second thing I have to do—Well, 
that is a secret between me and that un- 
happy woman. She is bad enough, but 
not so heartless as you think.”’ 

Sir Charles shook his head incredulous- 
ly, but said no more; and soon after fell 
asleep. 

In the evening he woke, and found the 
Sister watching. 

She now turned her head away from 
him, and asked him quietly to describe 
Miss Bella Bruce to her. 


Ay, | remember. That vile 


26 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


He described her in minute and glow- 
ing terms. ‘‘But oh, Sister,”’ said he, 
‘‘it is not her beauty only, but the beauty 
of her mind. So gentle, so modest, so 
timid, so docile. She would never have 
had the heart to turn me off. But she 
will obey her father. She looked forward 
to obey me, sweet dove.”’ 

‘‘Did she say so?”’ 

«Yes, that is her dream of happiness, 
to obey.”’ 

The Sister still questioned him with 
averted head, and he told her what had 
passed between Bella and him the last 
time he saw her, and all their innocent 
plans of married happiness. He told her, 
with the tear in his eye, and she listened, 
with the tear in hers. ‘‘ And then,’’ said 
he, laying his hand on her shoulder, ‘is 
it not hard? I just went to Mayfair, not 
to please myself, but to do an act of jus- 
tice—of more than justice; and then, 
for that, to have her door shut in my 
face. Only two hours between the 
height of happiness and the depth of 
misery.”’ 

The Sister said nothing, but she hid her 
face in her hands, and thought. 

The next morning, by her order, Polly 
came into the room, and said, ‘‘ You 
are to go home. The carriage is at the 
door.”’ 

With this she retired, and Sir Charles’s 
valet entered the room soon after to help 
him dress, 

“Where am I, James ? ”’ 

‘““Miss Somerset’s house, Sir Charles.”’ 

“Then get me out of it directly.” 

‘Yes, Sir Charles. The carriage is at 
the door.”’ 

“Who told you to come, James ? ”’ 

‘‘Miss Somerset, Sir Charles.”’ 

Thats odds” 

“Yes, Sir Charles.’’ 


When he got home he found a sofa 
placed by a fire, with wraps and pillows; 
his cigar case laid out, and a bottle of 
salts, and also a small glass of old cog- 
nac, in case of faintness. 

‘¢ Which of you had the gumption to do 
all this? ’’ 

‘¢ Miss Somerset, Sir Charles.’’ 


‘«¢ What, has she been here ?”’ 
«Yes, Sir Charles.’’ 

“Curse her ! ”’ 

“© Yes, Sir Charles.’ 


CHAPTER (valk 
‘LOVE LIES BLEEDING.”’ 


BELLA BRUCE was drinking the bitter- 
est cup a young virgin soul can taste. 
Illusion gone—the wicked world revealed 
as it is, how unlike what she thought it 
was—love crushed in her, and not crushed 
out of her, as it might if she had been 
either proud or vain. 

Frail men and women should see what 
a passionate but virtuous woman can 
suffer, when a revelation, of which they 
think but little, comes and blasts her 
young heart, and bids her dry up in a 
moment the deep well of her affection, 
since it flows for an unworthy object, and 
flows in vain. I tell you that the fair 
head severed from the chaste body is 
nothing to her compared with this. The 
fair body, pierced with heathen arrows, 
was nothing to her in the days of old 
compared with this. 

In a word—for nowadays we can but 
amplify, and so enfeeble, what some old 
dead master of language, immortal 
though obscure, has said in words of 
granite—here 


‘** Love lay bleeding.” 


No fainting —no vehement weeping ; 
but oh, such deep desolation ; such weari- 
ness of life; such a pitiable restlessness. 
Appetite gone; the taste of food almost 
lost; sleep unwilling to come; and oh, 
the torture of waking—for at that hor- 
rible moment all rushed back at once, 
the joy that had been, the misery that 
was, the blank that was to come. 

She never stirred out, except when or- 
dered, and then went like an automaton. 


A TERRIBLE 


Pale, sorrow-stricken, and patient, she 
moved about, the ghost of herself; and 
lay down a little, and then tried to work 
a little, and then to read a little; and 
could settle to nothing but sorrow and 
deep despondency. 

Not that she nursed her grief. She had 
been told to be brave, and she tried. But 
her grief was her master. It came well- 
ing through her eyes in a moment, of its 
own accord. 

She was deeply mortified too. But, 
in her gentle nature, anger could play 
but a secondary part. Her indignation 
was weak beside her grief, and did little 
to bear her up. 

Yet her sense of shame was vivid; and 
she tried hard not to let her father see 
how deeply she loved the man who had 
gone from her to Miss Somerset. Besides, 
he had ordered her to fight against a love 
that-now could only degrade her; he had 
ordered, and it was for her to obey. 

As soon as Sir Charles was better, he 
wrote her a long, humble letter, owning 
that, before he knew her, he had led a free 
life; but assuring her that, ever since 
that happy time, his heart and his time 
had been solely hers; as to his visit to 
Miss Somerset, it had been one of business 
merely, and this he could prove, if she 
would receive him. The admiral could 
be present at that interview, and Sir 
Charles hoped to convince him he had 
been somewhat hasty and harsh in his 
decision. 

Now the admiral had foreseen Sir 
Charles would write to her; so he had 
ordered his man to bring all letters to 
him first. . 

He recognized Sir Charles’s hand, and 
brought the latter in to Bella. ‘Now, 
my child,’’ said he, ‘‘be brave. Here is a 
letter from that man.’’ 

“Oh, papa! 1 thought he would. I 
knew he would.’’ And the pale face was 
flushed with joy and hope all in a mo- 
ment. 

‘“Derwirat,?:? 

‘‘ Write and explain.”’ , 

‘“Hxplain? <A thing that is clear as 
sunshine. He has written to throw dust 
in your eyes again. You are evidently in 


TEMPTATION. Qty 


no state to judge. J shall read this letter 
first.’’ 

“Yes, papa,’’ said Bella, faintly. 

He did read it, and she devoured his 
countenance all the time. 

‘¢There is nothing in it. He offers no 
real explanation, but only says he can ex- 
plain, and asks for an interview—to play 
upon your weakness. If I give you this 
letter, it will only make you cry, and 
render your task more difficult. I must 
be strong for your good, and set you an 
example. I loved this young man too; 
but, now I know him ’’—then he actually 
thrust the letter into the fire. 

But this was too much. Bella shrieked 
at the act, and put her hand to her heart, 
and shrieked again. ‘‘Ah! you'll kill 
us, you’ll kill us both!”’ she cried. “‘ Poor 
Charles! Poor Bella! You don’t love 
your child—you have no pity.” And, for 
the first time, her misery was violent. 
She writhed and wept, and at last went 
into violent hysterics, and frightened that 
stout old warrior more than cannon had 
ever frightened him; and presently she 
became quiet, and wept at his knees, and 
begged his forgiveness, and said he was 
wiser than she was, and she would obey 
him in everything, only he must not be 
angry with her if she could not live. 

Then the stout admiral mingled his 
tears with hers, and began to realize 
what deep waters of affliction his girl 
was wading in. 

Yet he saw no way out but firmness. 
He wrote to Sir Charles to say that his 
daughter was too ill to write: but that 
no explanation was possible, and no inter- 
view could be allowed. 

Sir Charles, who, after writing, had 
conceived the most sanguine hopes, was 
now as wretched as Bella. Only, now 
that he was refused a hearing, he had 
wounded pride to support him a little 
under wounded love. 

Admiral Bruce, fearing for his daugh- 
ter’s health, and even for her life—she 
pined so visibly—now ordered her to di- 
vide her day into several occupations, and 
exact divisions of time—an hour for this, 
an hour for that ; an hour by the clock— 
and here he showed practical wisdom. 


28 WORKS 
Try it, ye that are very unhappy, and 
tell me the result. 

Asa part of this excellent system, she 
had to walk round the square from eleven 
to twelve A. M., but never alone; he was 
not going to have Sir Charles surprising 
her into an interview. He always went 
with her, and, as he was too stiff to walk 
briskly, he sat down, and she had to walk 
in sight. He took a stout stick with him 
—for Sir Charles. But Sir Charles was 
proud, and stayed at home with his deep 
wound. 

One day, walking round the square 
with a step of Mercury and heart of lead, 
Bella Bruce met a Sister of Charity pac- 
ing slow and thoughtful; their eyes met 
and drank, in a moment, every feature 
of each other. 

The Sister, apparently, had seen the 
settled grief on that fair face; for the 
next time they met, she eyed her with a 
certain sympathy, which did not escape 
Bella. 

This subtle interchange took place sev- 
eral times and Bella could not help feeling 
a little grateful. ‘‘Ah!’’ she thought 
to herself, ‘‘how kind religious people 
are! I should like to speak to her.” 
And the next time they met she looked 
wistfully in the Sister’s face. 

She did not meet her again, for she 
went and rested on a bench, in sight of 
her father, but at some distance from 
him. Unconsciously to herself, his re- 
fusal even to hear Sir Charles repelled 
her. That was so hard on him and her. 
It looked like throwing away the last 
chance, the last little chance of happi- 
ness. 

By-and-by the Sister came and sat on 
the same bench. 

Bella was hardly surprised, but blushed 
high, for she felt that her own eyes had 
invited the sympathy of a stranger; and 
now it seemed to be coming. ‘The timid 
girl felt uneasy. The Sister saw that, 
and approached her with tact. ‘* You 
look unwell,’’ said she, gently, but with 
no appearance of extravagant interest or 
curiosity. 

““T am—a little,’ 
servedly. 


> said Bella, very re- 


OF CHARLES 


READE. 


‘‘Excuse my remarking it. We are 
professional nurses, and apt to be a little 
officious, I fear.’ 

No reply. 

‘‘Tsaw you were unwell. But I hope 
it is not serious. I can generally tell 
when the sick are in danger.’’ A peculiar 
look. ‘‘lam glad not to see it inso young 
and—good a face.’’ ' 

“You are young, too; very young, 
and—’’ she was going to say “‘ beautiful,” 
but she was too shy—‘‘to be a Sister of 
Charity. But Iam sure you never regret 
leaving such a world as this is.”’ 

‘“Never. Ihave lost the only thing I 
ever valued in it.’’ 

“‘T have no right to ask you 
that was.”’ 

«¢ You shall know without asking. 
IT loved proved unworthy. ”’ 

The Sister sighed deeply, and then, 
hiding her face with her hands for a mo- 
ment, rose abruptly, and left the square, 
ashamed, apparently, of having been be- 
trayed into such a confession. 

Bella, when she was twenty yards off, 
put out a timid hand, as if to detain her; 
but she had not the courage to say any- 
thing of the kind. 

She never told her father a word. She 
had got somebody now who could sym- 
pathize with her better than he could. 

Next day the Sister was there, and 
Bella bowed to her when she met her. 

This time it was the Sister who went 
and sat on the bench. 

Bella continued her walk for some time, 
but at last ceuld not resist the tempta- 
tion. She came and sat down on the 
bench, and blushed ; as much as to say, 
‘‘T have the courage to come, but not to 
speak upon a certain subject, which shall 
be nameless. ”’ 

The Sister, as may be imagined, was 
not so shy. She opened a conversation. 
‘Tl committed a fault yesterday. I spoke 
to you of myself, and of the past: it is 
discouraged by our rules. We are bound 
to inquire the griefs of others; not to 
tell our own.” 

This was a fair opening, but Bella was 
too delicate to show her wounds to a 
fresh acquaintance. 


what 


One 


A TERRIBLE 


The Sister, having failed at that, tried 
something very different. 

‘*But I could tell you a pitiful case 
about another. Some time ago I nursed 
a gentleman whom love had laid on a 
sick-bed.”’ 

<A gentleman! What! can they love 
as we do?’’ said Bella, bitterly. 

““Not many of them; but this was an 
exception. But I don’t know whether I 
ought to tell these secrets to so young a 
lady.*2 

SOh; ves_please—what else is there in 
this world worth talking about? Tell 
me about the poor man who could love 
as we can.” 

The Sister seemed to hesitate, but at 
last decided to go on. 


‘<“Well, he was a man of the world, and 


he had not always been a good man; but 
he was trying to be. He had fallen in 
love with a young lady, and seen the 
beauty of virtue, and was going to 
marry her and lead a good life. But he 
was a man of honor, and there was a 
lady for whom he thought it was his 
duty to provide. He set his lawyer to 
draw a deed, and his lawyer appointed 
a day for signing it at her house. The 
poor man came because his lawyer told 
him. Do you think there was any great 
harm in that? ’’ 

“No; of course not.”’ 

‘Well, then, he lost his love for 
that.’ 

Miss Bruce’s color began to come and 
go, and her supple figure to crouch a 
little. She said nothing. 

The Sister continued: ‘‘Some malicious 
person went and told the young lady’s 
father the gentleman was in the habit of 
visiting that lady, and would be with her 
at a certain hour. And so he was; but 
it was the lawyer’s appointment, you 
know. You seem agitated.’’ 

‘““No, no; not agitated,’’ said Bella, 
‘‘but astonished ; it is so like a story I 
know. A young lady, a friend of mine, 
had an anonymous letter, telling her that 
one she loved and esteemed was unwor- 
thy. But what you have told me shows 
me how deceitful appearances may be. 
What was your patient’s name ?”’ 


TEMPTATION. 29 

‘‘It is against our rules to tell that. 
But you said an ‘anonymous letter.’ 
Was your friend so weak as to believe an 
anonymous letter? The writer of such a 
letter is a coward, and a coward always 
is a liar. Show me your friend’s anony- 
mous letter. I may, perhaps, be able to 
throw a light on it.”’ 

The conversation was interrupted by 
Admiral Bruce, who had approached 
them unobserved. ‘‘ Kixcuse me,’’ said 
he, “but you ladies seem to have hit 
upon a very interesting theme.’’ 

‘Yes, papa,’ said Bella. ‘I took the 
liberty to question this lady as to her ex- 
periences of sick-beds, and she Nas ovat 
enough to give me some of them.’ 

Having uttered this with a sudden ap- 
pearance of calmness that first amazed 
the Sister, then made her smile, she took 
her father’s arm, bowed politely, and a 
little stiffly, to her new friend, and drew 
the admiral away. 

“Oh!’’ thought the Sister. ‘I am 
not to speak to the old gentleman. He 
is not in her confidence. Yet she is very 
fondof him. How shehangs on his arm ! 
Simplicity! Candor! We are all tarred 
with the same stick—we women.”’ 

That night Bella was a changed girl— 
exalted and depressed by turns, and with 
no visible reason. 

Her father was pleased. Anything 
better than that deadly languor. 

The next day Bella sat by her father’s 
side in the square, longing to go to the 
Sister, yet patiently waiting to be or- 
gened: 

At last the admiral, finding her dull 
and listless, said, ‘‘ Why don’t you go 
and talk to the Sister? She amuses you. 
V’ll join you when I have smoked this 
cigar.’ 

The obedient Bella rose, and went to- 
ward the Sister as if compelled. But 
when she got to her her whole manner 
changed. She took her warmly by the 
hand, and said, trembling and blushing, 
and all on fire, ‘“‘ | have brought you the 
anonymous letter.”’ 

The elder actress took it and ran her 
eye over it—an eye that now sparkled 
like a diamond. ‘‘Humph !”’’ said she, 


30 WORKS 


OF CHARLES 


READE. 


and flung off all the dulcet tones of her | of the house, and forbade her, on any pre- 


assumed character with mighty little 
ceremony. ‘‘ This hand is disguised a 
little, but I think I know it. Iam sure I 
do! Thedirty little rascal !”’ 

‘‘Madam!’’ cried Bella, aghast with 
surprise at this language. 

‘“T tell you I know the writer and his 
rascally motive. You must lend me this 
for a day or two.”’ 

‘*Must I? ’’ said Bella. 
Papa would be so angry.”’ 

“Very likely ; but you will lend it to 

me for all that; for with this I can clear 
Miss Bruce’s lover and defeat his ene- 
mies.”’ 
. Bella uttered a faint cry, and trembled, 
and her bosom heaved violently. She 
looked this way and that, like a fright- 
ened deer. ‘‘But papa? His eye is on 
Bs al 


‘« Excuse me! 


‘* Never deceive your father ! ’’ said the 
Sister, almost sternly; ‘‘ but,’? darting 
her gray eyes right into those dove-like 
orbs, ‘‘ give me five minutes’ start—IF 
YOU REALLY LOVE SIR CHARLES Bas- 
SETT.”’ 

With these words she carried off the 
letter; and Bella ran, blushing, panting, 
trembling, to her father, and clung to 
him. 

He questioned her, but could get noth- 
ing from her very intelligible until the 
Sister was out of sight, and then she told 
him all without reserve. 

‘Tl was unworthy of him to doubt him. 
An anonymous slander. I'll never trust 
appearances again. Poor Charles! Oh, 
my darling! what he must have suffered 
if he loves like me.’’ Then came a shower 
of happy tears; then a shower of happy 
kisses. 

The admiral groaned, but for a long 
time he could not get a word in. When 
he did it was chilling. ‘ My poor girl,”’ 
said he, “this unhappy love blinds you. 
What, don’t you see the woman is no 
nun, but some sly hussy that man has 
sent to throw dust in your eyes? ”’ 

Nothing she could say prevailed to 
turn him from this view, and he acted 
upon it with resolution: he confined her 
excursions to a little garden at the back 


tense, to cross the threshold. 

Miss Somerset came to the square in 
another disguise, armed with important 
information. But no Bella Bruce appeared 
to meet her. 


All this time Richard Bassett was 
happy as a prince. 

So besotted was he with egotism, and 
so blinded by imaginary wrongs, that he 
rejoiced in the lovers’ separation, rejoiced 
in his cousin’s attack. 

Polly, who now regarded him almost 
as a lover, told him all about it; and 
already in anticipation he saw himself 
and his line once more lords of the two 
manors—Bassett and Huntercombe—on 
the demise of Sir Charles Bassett, Bart., 
deceased without issue. 

And, in fact, Sir Charles was utterly 
defeated. He lay torpid. 

But there was a tough opponent in the 
way—all the more dangerous that she 
was not feared. 

One fine day Miss Somerset electrified 
her groom by ordering her pony carriage 
to the door at ten A. M. 

She took the reins on the pavement, 
like a man, jumped in light as a feather, 
and away rattled the carriage into the 
City. The ponies were all alive, the 
driver’s eye keen as a bird’s; her cour- 
age and her judgment equal. She wound 
in and out among the huge vehicles with 
perfect composure; and on those occa- 
sions when, the traffic being interrupted, 
the oratorical powers were useful to fill 
up the time, she shone with singular bril- 
liance. The West End is too often in 
debt to the City, but, in the matter of 
chaff, it was not so this day; for when- 
ever.she took a peck she returned a 
bushel; and so she rattled to the door of 
Solomon Oldfield, solicitor, Old Jewry. 

She penetrated into the inner office of 
that worthy, and told him he must come 
with her that minute to Portman Square. 

‘‘Impossible, madam!’’ And, as they 
say in the law reports, gave his reasons. 

‘‘Certain, sir!’? And gaveno reasons. 

He still resisted. | 

Thereupon she told him she should sit 


- 


A TERRIBLE 


there all day and chaff his clients one 
after another, and that his connection 
with the Bassett and Huntercombe es- 
tates should end. 

Then he saw hehad to do with a terma- 
gant, and consented, with a sigh. 

She drove him westward, wincing every 
now and then at her close driving, and 
told him all, and showed him what she 
was pleased to call her little game. He 
told her it was too romantic. Said he, 
“You ladies read nothing but novels ; 
but the real world is quite different from 
the world of novels.’? Having delivered 
this remonstrance—which was tolerably 
just, for she never read anything but 
novels and sermons—he submitted like 
a lamb, and received her instructions. 

She drove as fast as she talked, so that 
by this time they were at Admiral Bruce’s 
door. 

Now Mr. Oldfield took the lead, as per 
instructions. ‘‘ Mr. Oldfield, solicitor, 
and a lady—on business.”’ 

The porter delivered this to the foot- 
man with the accuracy which all who 
send verbal messages deserve and may 
count on. ‘Mr. Oldfield and lady.’’ 

The footman, who represented the next 
step in oral tradition, without which form 
of history the Heathen world would never 
have known that Hannibal softened the 
rocks with vinegar, nor the Christian 
world that eleven thousand virgins dwelt 
in a German town the size of Putney, 
announced the pair as ‘‘Mr. and Mrs. 
Hautville.’’ 

“T don’t know them, I think. 
I will see them.”’ 

They entered, and the admiral stared 
a little, and wondered how this couple 
came together—the keen but plain old 
man, with clothes’ hanging on him, and 
the dashing beauty, with her dress in the 
height of the fashion, and her gauntleted 
hands. However, he bowed ceremoni- 
ously, and begged his visitors to be 
seated. 

Now the folding-doors were ajar, and 
the soi-disant Mrs. Oldfield peeped. She 
saw Bella Bruce at some distance, seated 
by the fire, in a reverie. 

Judge that young lady’s astonishment 


Well, 


TEMPTATION. 31 
when she looked up and observed a large» 
white, well-shaped hand, sparkling with 
diamonds and rubies, beckoning her fur- 
tively. 


The owner of that sparkling hand soon 
heard a soft rustle of silk come toward 
the door; the very rustle, somehow, was 
eloquent, and betrayed love and timidity, 
and something innocent yet subtle. The 
jeweled hand went in again directly. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


MEANTIME Mr. Oldfield began to tell 
the admiral who he was, and that he was 
come to remove a false impression about 
a client of his, Sir Charles Bassett.. 

‘That, sir,’’ said the admiral, sternly, 
‘‘ig a name we never mention here.’’ 

He rose and went to the folding-doors, 
and deliberately closed them. 

The Somerset, thus defeated, bit her 
lip, and sat all of a heap, like a cat. about 
to spring, looking sulky and vicious. 

Mr. Oldfield persisted, and, as he took 
the admiral’s hint and lowered his voice, 
he was interrupted no more, but made a 
simple statement of those facts which are 
known to the reader. 

Admiral Bruce heard them, and ad- 
mitted that the case was not quite so bad 
as he had thought. 

Then Mr. Oldfield proposed that Sir 
Charles should be re-admitted. 

‘No,’ Said the old admiral, firmly ; 
‘turn it how you will, it is too ugly; the 
bloom of the thing is gone. Why should 
my daughter take that woman’s leav- 
ings? Why should I give her pure heart 
to a man about town? ”’ 

‘¢ Because you will break it else,’’ said 
Miss Somerset, with affected politeness. 

‘Give her credit for more dignity, 
madam, if you please,’’ replied Admiral 
Bruce, with equal politeness. 


32 WORKS 


ah, dignity !’’ cried the 
Somerset. 

At this free phrase from so well-dressed 
a lady Admiral Bruce opened his eyes, 
and inquired of Oldfield, rather satiri- 
cally, who was this lady that did him 
the honor to interfere in his family af- 
fairs. 

Oldfield looked confused ; but Somerset, 
full of mother-wit, was not to be caught 
napping. ‘‘I’m a by-stander; and they 
always see clearer than the folk them- 
selves. You are a man of honor, sir, and 
you are very clever at sea, no doubt, 
and a fighter, and all that; but you are 
no match for land-sharks. You are be- 
ing made a dupe and a tool of. Who do 
you think wrote that anonymous letter 
to your daughter? A friend of truth? 
a friend of injured innocence? Nothing 
of the sort. One Richard Bassett—Sir 
Charles’s cousin. Here, Mr. Oldfield, 
please compare these two handwritings 
closely, and you will see I am right.” 
She put down the anonymous letter and 
Richard Bassett’s letter to herself; but 
she could not wait for Mr. Oldfield to 
compare the documents, now her tongue 
was set going. ‘* Yes, gentlemen, this 
is new to you; but you'll find that little 
scheming rascal wrote them both, and 
with as base a motive and as black a 
heart as any other anonymous coward’s. 
His game is to make Sir Charles Bassett 
die childless, and so then this dirty fel- 
low would inherit the estate; and owing 
to you being so green, and swallowing an 
anonymous letter like pure water from the 
spring, he very nearly got his way. Sir 
Charles has been at death’s door along 
of all this.’’ 

‘*Hush, madam! not so loud, please,’’ 
whispered Admiral Bruce, looking un- 
easily toward the folding doors. 

“Why not?’ bawled the Somerset. 
‘THE TRUTH MAY BE BLAMED, BUT IT 
CAN’T BE SHAMED. I tell you that your 
precious letter brought Sir Charles Bas- 
sett to the brink of the grave. Soon as 
ever he got it he came tearing in his cab 
to Miss Somerset’s house, and accused 
her of telling the lie to keep him—and he 
might have known better, for the jade 


bother 


OF CHARLES READE. 


never did a sneaking thing in her life. 
But, any way, he thought it must be her 
doing, miscalled her like a dog, and raged 
at her dreadful, and at last—what with 
love and fury and despair—he had the 
terriblest fit you ever saw. He fell down 
as black as your hat, and his eyes rolled, 
and his teeth gnashed, and he foamed at 
the mouth, and took four to hold him; 
and presently as white as a ghost, and 
given up fordead. No pulse for hours; 
and when his life came back his reason 
was gone.”’ . 

“Good Heavens, madam ! ” 

«For a time it was. How he did rave! 
and ‘Bella’ the only name on his lips. 
And now he lies in his own house as weak 
as water. Come, old gentleman, don’t 
you be too hard; you are not a child, 
like your daughter; take the world as it 
is. Do you think you will ever find a 
man of fortune who has not had a lady 
friend? Why, every single gentleman in 
London that can afford to keep a saddle- 
horse has an article of that sort in some 
corner or other; and if he parts with her 
as soon as his banns are cried, that is all 
you can expect. Do you think any mo- 
ther in Belgravia would make a row 
about that? They are downier than 
you are; they would shrug their aristo- 
cratic shoulders, and decline to listen to 
the past lives of their sons-in-law—unless 
it was all in the newspapers, mind you.’’ 

‘“‘If Belgravian mothers have merce- 
nary minds, that is no reason why I 
should, whose cheeks have bronzed in 
the service of a virtuous queen, and 
whose hairs have whitened in honor.”’ 

On receiving this broadside the Somer- 
set altered her tone directly, and said, 
obsequiously: ‘That is true, sir, and I 
beg your pardon for comparing you to 
the trash. But brave men are pitiful, 
you know. Then show your pity here. 
Pity a gentleman that repented his faults 
as soon as your daughter showed him 
there was a better love within reach, 
and now lies stung by an anonymous 
viper, and almost dying of love and 
mortification ; and pity your own girl, 
that will soon lose her health, and _ per- 
haps her life, if you don’t give in.’’ 


A THRRIBLE 
‘¢She is not so weak, madam. She is 
in better spirits already.’’ 

« Ay, but then she didn’t know what 
he had suffered for her. She does now, 
for I heard her moan; and she will die 
for him now, or else she will give you 
twice as many kisses as usual some day, 
and ery a bucketful over you, and then 
run away with her lover. I know women 
better than you do; Lam one of the pre- 
cious lot.” 

The admiral replied only with a look 
of superlative scorn. This incensed the 
Somerset; and that daring woman, 
whose ear was nearer to the door, and 
had caught sounds that escaped the men, 
actually turned the handle, and while 
her eye flashed defiance, her vigorous 
foot spurned the folding-doors wide open 
in half a moment. 

Bella Bruce lay with her head sidewise 
on the table, and her hands extended, 
moaning and sobbing piteously for poor 
Sir Charles. 

‘‘FHor shame, madam, to expose my 
child,’’ cried the admiral, bursting with 
indignation and grief. He rushed to her 
and took her in his arms. 

She scarcely noticed him, for the mo- 
ment he turned her she caught sight of 
Miss Somerset, and recognized her face in 
amoment. “ Ah! the Sister of Charity !”’ 
she cried, and stretched out her hands to 
her, with a look and a gesture So inno- 
cent, confiding, and imploring, that the 
Somerset, already much excited by her 
own eloquence, took a turn not uncom- 
mon with termagants, and began to cry 
herself. 

But she soon stopped that, for she saw 
her time was come to go, and avoid un- 
pleasant explanations. She made a dart 
and secured the two letters. ‘Settle it 
among yourselves,’’ said she, wheeling 
round and bestowing this advice on the 
whole party; then shot a sharp arrow 
at the admiral as she fled: ‘‘ If you must 
be a tool of Richard Bassett, don’t be a 
tool and a dupe by halves. He is in love 
with her too. Marry her to the black- 
guard, and then you will be sure to kill 
Sir Charles.”’ 

Having delivered this with such volu- 


TEMPTATION. 33 
bility that the words pattered out like a 
roll of musketry, she flounced out, with 
red cheeks and wet eyes, rushed down 
the stairs, and sprang into her carriage, 
whipped the ponies, and away at a pace 
that made the spectators stare. 

Mr. Oldfield muttered some excuses, 
and retired more sedately. 

All this set Bella Bruce trembling and 
weeping, and her father was some time 
before he could bring her to anything like 
composure. Her first words, when she 
could find breath, were, ‘‘ He is innocent ; 
he is unhappy. Oh, that I could fly to 
ia iee: 

‘‘Innocent! What proof?” 

‘¢That brave lady said so.”’ 

‘Brave lady! A bold hussy. Most 
likely a friend of the woman Somerset, 
and a bird of the same feather. Sir 
Charles has done himself no good with 
me by sending such an emissary.” 

‘No, papa; it was the lawyer brought 
her, and then her own good heart made 
her burst.out. Ah! she is not like me: 
she has courage. What a noble thing 
courage is, especially in a woman !”’ 

‘“Pray did you hear the language of 
this noble lady ? ”’ 

‘* Kvery word nearly ; and I shall never 
forget them. They were diamonds and 
pearls.”’ 

‘Of the sort you can pick up at Bill- 
ingsgate.’’ 

“Ah, papa, she pleaded for him as I 
cannot plead, and yet I love him. It was 
true eloquence. Oh, how she made me 
shudder! Only think: he had a fit, and 
lost his reason, and all for me. What 
shall I dojfaawhat! shall’ I do‘? 

This brought on a fit of weeping. 

Her father pitied her, and gave her 
a crumb of sympathy: said he was sorry 
for Sir Charles. 

«‘ But,”’ said he, recovering his resolu- 
tion, ‘‘it cannot be helped. He must 
expiate his vices, like other men. Do, 
pray, pluck up a little spirit and sense. 
Now try and keep to the point. This wo- 
man came from him; and you say you 
heard her language, and admire it. 
Quote me some of it.” 


‘“*She said he fell down as black as his 
") READE—VoL. VIII. 


34 


hat, and his eyes rolled, and his poor 
teeth ‘gnashed, and—oh, my darling! my 
darling! oh! oh! oh!”’ 

«There — there —I mean about other 
things.’’ 

Bella complied, but with a running ac- 
companiment of the sweetest little sobs. 

“She said I must be very green, to 
swallow an anonymous letter like spring 


water. Oh! oh!” 
‘¢Green? There was a word !’’ 
“Oh! oh! But it is the right word. 


You can’t mend it. Try, and you will 
see you can’t. Of course I was green. 
Oh! And she said every gentleman who 
can afford to keep a saddle-horse has a 
female friend, till his banns are called in 
church. Oh! oh!”’ 

“A pretty statement to come to your 
ears !”’ 

“But if it isthe truth! ‘ THE TRUTH 
MAY BE BLAMED, BUT ITCAN’T BE SHAMED,’ 
Ah! JVll not forget that: Ill pray every 
night I may remember those words of the 
brave lady. Oh!” : 

*“ Yes, take her for your oracle.”’ 

‘I mean to. I always try to profit by 
my superiors. She has courage: I have 
none. I beat about the bush, and talk 
skim-milk ; she uses the very word. She 
said we have been the dupe and the tool 
of a little scheming rascal, an anonymous 
coward, with motives as base as his heart 
is black—oh! oh! Ay, that is the way 
to speak of such a man ; I can’t do it my- 
self, but I reverence the brave lady who 
can. And she wasn’t afraid even of you, 
dear papa. ‘ Come, old gentleman ’—ha! 
ha! ha !—‘ take the world as it is; Bel- 
gravian mothers would not break both 
their hearts for what is past and gone.’ 
What hard good sense! a thing I always 
did admire: because I’ve got none. But 
her heart is not hard ; after all her words 
of fire, that went so straight instead of 
beating the bush, she ended by crying for 
me. Oh! oh! oh! Bless her! Bless her! 
If ever there was a good woman in the 
world, that is one. She was not born a 
lady, [am afraid; but that is nothing: 
she was born a woman, and I mean to 
make her acquaintance, and take her for 
my example in all things. No, dear 


WORKS OF CHARLES 


RHADE. 


papa, women are not so pitiful to wo- 


men without cause. She is almost a 
stranger, yet she cried for me. Can you 
be harder to me than she is? No; pity 


your poor girl, who will lose her health, 
and perhaps her life. Pity poor Charles, 
stung by an anonymous viper, and laid on 
a bed of sickness forme. Oh! oh! oh!”’ 

‘*} do pity you, Bella. When you cry 
like this, my heart bleeds.”’ 

‘“<“Dilstry 1ot to cry, papaes sonemenn) 

**But most of all, I pity your infatua- 
tion, your blindness. Poor, innocent 
dove, that looks at others by the light of 
her own goodness, and so sees all man- 
ner of virtues in a brazen hussy. Now 
answer me one plain question. You called 
her ‘the Sister!’ Is she not the same 
woman that played the Sister of Char- 
iby caw 

Bella blushed to the temples, and ¢ vid, 
hesitatingly, she was not quite sure 

‘““Come, Bella. I thought you were 
going to imitate the jade, and not beat 
about the bush. Yes or no?”’ 

‘‘'The features are very like.”’ 

“Bella, you know it is the same wo- 
man. You recognized her in a moment. 
That speaks volumes. But she shall find 
Iam not to be made ‘a dupe and a tool 
of’ quite so easily as she thinks. I’ll tell 
you what — this is some professional ac- 
tress Sir Charles has hired to waylay you. 
Little simpleton ! ”’ 

He said no more at that time; but 
after dinner he ruminated, and took a 
very serious, indeed almost a maritime, 
view of the crisis. ‘‘I’m overmatched 
now,’ thought he. ‘*They will cut my 
sloop out under the very guns of the flag- 
ship if we stay much longer in this port— 
a lawyer against me, and a woman too; 
there’s nothing to be done but heave 
anchor, hoist sail, and run for it.’’ 

He sent off a foreign telegram, and 
then went upstairs. ‘‘ Bella, my dear,” 
said he, ‘‘pack up your clothes for a 
journey. We start to-morrow.”’ 

‘¢ A journey, papa! A long one? ”’ 

‘“No. We shan’t double the Horn 
this time.’’ 

‘‘ Brighton? Paris?” 

‘‘ Oh, farther than that.”’ 


A TERRIBLE 


“The grave: that is the journey I 
should like to take.”’ 

“So you shall, some day ; but just now 
it is a forevgn port you are bound for. 
Go and pack.”’ 

‘“‘T obey.’? And she was creeping off, 
but he called her back and kissed her, 
and said, ‘“‘ Now I'll tell you where you 
are going; 
solemnly not to write one line to 
Charles.”’ 

She promised, but cried as soon as she 
had promised ; whereat the admiral in- 
ferred he had done wisely to exact the 
promise. 

‘““Well, my dear,’’ said he, ‘“‘we are 
going to Baden. Your aunt Molineux is 
there. She isa woman of great delicacy 
and prudence, and has daughters of her 
own all well married, thanks to her 
motherly care. She will bring you to 
your senses better than I can.’’ 

Next evening they left England by the 
mail; and the day after Richard Bassett 
learned this through his servant, and 
went home triumphant, and, indeed, 
wondering at his success. He ascribed 
it, however, to the Nemesis which dogs 
the heels of those who inherit the estate 
of another. 

Such was the only moral reflection he 
made, though the business in general, 
and particularly his share in it, admitted 
of several. 

Miss Somerset also heard of it, and 
told Mr. Oldfield; he told Sir Charles 
Bassett. 

That gentleman sighed deeply, and 
said nothing. He had lost all hope. 


Sir 


? 


The whole matter appeared stagnant 
for about ten days; and then a delicate 
hand stirred the dead waters cautiously. 
Mr. Oldfield, of all people in the world, 
received a short letter from Bella Bruce. 


‘* Konigsberg Hotel, BADEN. 
“Miss Bruce presents her compliments 
to Mr. Oldfield, and will feel much obliged 
if he will send her the name and address 
of that brave lady who accompanied him 
to her father’s house. 
‘‘Miss Bruce desires to thank that 


but you must promise me | 


TEMPTATION. 35 
lady, personally, for her noble defense of 
one with whom it would be improper for 
her to communicate ; but she can never 
be indifferent to his welfare, nor hear of 
his sufferings without deep sorrow.”’ 


‘‘Confound it !’? said Solomon Oldfield. 
“What am I todo? I mustn’t tell her 
it is Miss Somerset.’? So the wary 
lawyer had a copy of the letter made, 
and sent to Miss Somerset for instruc- 
tions. 

Miss Somerset sent for Mr. Marsh, who 
was now more at her beck and call than 
ever, and told him she had a ticklish 
letter to write. ‘‘I can talk with the 
best,’’? said she, ‘‘but the moment I sit 
down and take up a pen something cold 
runs up my shoulder, and then down my 
backbone, and I’m palsied; now you are 
always writing, and can’t say ‘ Bo’ to 
a goose in company. Let us mix our- 
selves; Ill walk about and speak my 
mind, and then you put down the cream, 
and send it.’’ 

From this ingenious process resulted 
the following composition : 


“She whom Miss Bruce is good enough 
to call ‘the brave lady’ happened to know 
the truth, and that tempted her to try 
and baffle an anonymous slanderer, who 
was ruining the happiness of a lady and 
gentleman. Being a person of warm im- 
pulses, she went great lengths; but she 
now wishes to retire into the shade. She 
is flattered by Miss Bruce’s desire to know 
her, and some day, perhaps, may remind 
her of it; but at present she must deny 
herself that honor. If her reasons were 
known, Miss Bruce would not be offended 
nor hurt; she would entirely approve 
them.”’ 


Soon after this, as Sir Charles Bassett 
sat by the fire, disconsolate, his servant 
told him a lady wanted to see him. 

SVV Lois. usr 

‘‘ Don’t know, Sir Charles; but it is a 
kind of a sort of a nun, Sir Charles.”’ 

‘“‘Oh, a Sister of Charity! Perhaps 
the one that nursed me. Admit her, by 
all means.”’ 


The Sister came in. She had a large 
veil on. Sir Charles received her with 
profound respect, and thanked her, with 
some little hesitation, for her kind atten- 
tion to him. She stopped him by saying 
that was merely her duty. ‘‘ But,’’ said 
she, softly, ‘‘ words fell from you, on the 
bed of sickness, that touched my heart; 
and besides I happen to know the lady.’’ 

‘You know my Bella!’ cried Sir 
Charles. “Ah, then no wonder you 
speak so kindly; you can feel what I 
have lost. She has left England to 
avoid me.’’ 

‘©All the better. Where she is the 
door cannot be closed in your face. She 
is at Baden. Follow her there. She has 
heard the truth from Mr. Oldfield, and 
she knows who wrote the anonymous 
letter.’’ 

«¢ And who did ? ”’ 

“‘Mr. Richard Bassett.”’ 

This amazed Sir Charles. 

‘The scoundrel !’’ said he, after a long 
silence. 

“Well, then, why let that fellow defeat 
you, for his own ends? I would go at 
once to Baden. Your leaving England 
would be one more proof to her that: she 
has no rival. Stick to her like a man, 
sir, and you will win her, I tell you.”’ 

These words from a nun amazed and 
fired him. He rose from his chair, 
flushed with sudden hope and ardor. 
‘‘T’ll leave for Baden to-morrow morn- 
ing.”’ 

The Sister rose to retire. 

eNO,1n0,, Cried-sir’ Charles, eed have 
not thanked you. I ought to go down 
on my knees and bless you for all this. 
To whom am I so indebted ? ”’ 

“No matter, sir.’’ 

‘‘ But it does matter. You nursed me, 
and perhaps saved my life, and now you 
give me back the hopes that make life 
sweet. You will not trust me with your 
name?’’ 

‘«<We have no name.”’ 

‘“Your voice at times sounds very like 
—no, I will not affront you by such a com- 
parison.”’ 

“‘1’m her sister,’ said she, like light- 
ning. 


| 


| 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


This announcement quite staggered Sir | 
Charles, and he was silent and uncom- 
fortable. It gave him a chill. 

The Sister watched him keenly, but 
said nothing. ; 

Sir Charles did not know what to say, 
so he asked to see her face. ‘‘It must 
be as beautiful as your heart.” 

The Sister shook her head. ‘‘ My face 
has been disfigured by a frightful dis- 
order. * 

Sir Charles uttered an ejaculation of 
regret and pity. 

““T could not bear to show it to one 


who esteems me as you seem to do. But 
perhaps it will not always be so.”’ 
‘“‘T hope not. You are young, and 


Heaven is good. Can I do nothing for 
you, who have done so much for me?”’ | 

‘* Nothing—unless—”’ said she, feigning 
vast timidity, ‘‘ you could spare me that 
ring of yours, aS a remembrance of the 
part I have played in this affair.’’ 

Sir Charles colored. It was a ruby of 
the purest water, and had been two cen- 
turies in his family. He colored, but was 
too fine a gentleman to hesitate. He 
said, ‘‘By all means. But it is a poor 
thing to offer you.”’ 

““T shall value it very much,”’ 

‘‘Say no more. I am fortunate in 
having anything you deign to accept.”’ 

And so the ring changed hands. 

The Sister now put it on her middle 
finger, and held up her hand, and her 
bright eyes glanced at it, through her 
veil, with that delight which her sex in 
general feel at the possession of a new 
bauble. She recovered herself, however, 
and told him, soberly, the ring should 
return to his family at her death, if not 
before. 

‘‘T will give you a piece of advice for 
it,’? said she. ‘‘Miss Bruce has foxy 
hair; and she is very timid. Don’t you 
take her advice about commanding her. 
She would like to be your slave! Don’t 
let her. Coax her to speak her mind. 
Make a friend of her. Don’t you put her 
to this—that she must displease you, or 
else deceive you. She might choose 
wrong, especially with that colored 
hair.’’ 


, 


7am 


red ASP pe + fe 


Pine 


MTN 


| 
| 


ANN \ 
\\ 


te ane 


/ 
| 


“‘ONE I LOVED PROVED UNWORTHY.” 
—A Terrible Temptation, Chapter VII. * 


READE, Volume Eight. 


A TERRIBLE 


‘‘It is not in her nature to deceive.’’ 

‘Tt is not in her nature to displease. 
Excuse me; I am too fanciful, and look 
at women too close. But | know your 
happiness depends on her. All your eggs 
are in that one basket. Well, I have 
told you how to carry the _ basket. 
Good-by.”’ 

Sir Charles saw her out, and bowed 
respectfully to her in the hall, while his 
servant opened the street door. He did 
her this homage as his benefactress. 


When admiral and Miss Bruce reached 
Baden Mrs. Molineux was away on a 
visit; and this disappointed Admiral 
Bruce, who had counted on her assist- 
ance to manage and comfort Bella. 
Bella needed the latter very much. A 
glance at her pale, pensive, lovely face 
was enough to show that sorrow was 
rooted at her heart. She was subjected 
to no restraint, but kept the house of her 
own accord, thinking, as persons of her 
age are apt to do, that her whole history 
must be written in her face. Still, of 
course, She did go out sometimes; and 
one cold but bright afternoon she was 
strolling languidly on the parade, when 
all in a moment she met Sir Charles 
Bassett face to face. 

She gave an eloquent scream, and 
turned pale a moment, and then the hot 
blood came rushing, and then it retired, 
and she stood at bay, with heaving 
bosom and great eyes. 

Sir Charles held out both hands pathet- 
ically. ‘ Don’t you be afraid of me.”’ 

When she found he was so afraid of 
offending her she became more coura- 
geous. ‘‘How dare you come here ?”’ 
said she, but with more curiosity than 
violence, for it had been her dream of 
hope he would come. 

‘* How could I keep away, when I heard 
you were here ? ”’ 

“You must not speak to me, sir; Iam 
forbidden.”’ 

“‘ Pray do not condemn me unheard.’’ 

‘Tf I listen to you I shall believe you. 
I won’t hear a word. Gentlemen can do 
things that ladies cannot even speak 
about. ‘Talk to my aunt Molineux; our 


TEMPTATION. 3% 


fate depends on her. This will teach you 
not to be so wicked. What business have 
gentlemen to be so wicked? Ladies are 
not. No, itis no use; I will not hear a 
syllable. Il am ashamed to be seen 
speaking to you. You area bad charac- 
ter. Oh, Charles, is it true you had a 
EG Py? 

‘“Y es.”’ 

“And have you been very ill? 
look ill.’’ 

‘“*] am better now, dearest.”’ 

“ Dearest ! Don’t call me names. How 
dare you keep speaking to me when I re- 
quest you not?”’ 

‘But I can’t excuse myself, and obtain 
my pardon, and recover your love, unless 
I am allowed to speak.”’ 

“Oh, you can speak to my aunt 
Molineux, and she will read you a fine 
lesson.”’ 

‘Where is she? ”’ 

‘“Nobody knows. But there is her 
house, the one with the iron gate. Get 
her ear first, if you really love me; and 
don’t you ever waylay me again. If you 
do, I shall say something rude to you, 
sir. Oh, I’m so happy ! ’’ 

Having let this out, she hid her face 
with her hands, and fled like the very 
wind. 

At dinner-time she was in high spirits. 

The admiral congratulated her. 

‘“‘Brava, Bell! Youth and health and 
a foreign air will soon cure you of that 
Tollye;’ 

Bella blushed deeply, and said nothing. 
The truth struggled within her, too, but 
she shrank from giving pain, and receiv- 
ing expostulation. 

She kept the house, though, for two 
days, partly out of modesty, partly out 
of an honest and pious desire to obey her 
father as much as she could. 

The third day Mrs. Molineux arrived, 
and sent over to the admiral. 

He invited Bella to come with him. She 
consented eagerly, but was so long in 
dressing that he threatened to go with- 
out her. She implored him not to do 
that; and after a monstrous delay, the 
motive of which the reader may perhaps 
divine, father and daughter called on 


You 


38 


Mrs. Molineux. She received them very 
affectionately. But when the admiral, 
with some hesitation, began to enter on 
the great subject, she said, quietly, 
‘‘Bella, my dear, go for a walk, and 
come back to me in half an hour.”’ 

‘«* Aunt Molineux!’ said Bella, extend- 
ing both her hands imploringly to that 
lady. 

Mrs. Molineux was proof against this 
blandishment, and Bella had to go. 

When she was gone, this lady, who 
both as wife and mother was literally a 
model, rather astonished her brother the 
admiral. She said: “‘I am sorry to tell 
you that you have conducted this matter 
with perfect impropriety, both you and 
Bella. She had no business to show you 
that anonymous letter ; and when she did 
show it you, you should have taken it 


from her, and told her not to believe a 


word of it.’’ 

‘And married my daughter to a lib- 
ertine! Why, Charlotte, 1 am ashamed 
of you.”’ 

Mrs. Molineux colored high; but she 
kept her temper, and ignored the inter- 
ruption. ‘Then, if you decided to go 
into so indelicate a question at all (and 
really you were not bound to do so on 
anonymous information), why, then, you 
should have sent for Sir Charles, and 
given him the letter, and put him on his 
honor to tell you the truth. He would 
have told you the fact, instead of a 
garbled version; and the fact is that be- 
fore he knew Bella he had a connection, 
which he prepared to dissolve, on terms 
very honorable to himself, as soon as he 
engaged himself to vour daughter. What 
is there in that? Why, it is common, 
universal, among men of fashion. I am 
so vexed it ever came to Bella’s knowl- 
edge : really it is dreadful to me, as a mo- 
ther, that such a thing should have been 
discussed before that child. Complete 
innocence means complete ignorance; 
and that is how all my girls went to their 
husbands. However, what we must do 
now is to tell her Sir Charles has satisfied 
me he was not to blame; and after that 
the subject must never be recurred to. 
Sir Charles has promised me never to 


meux. 
1 look me in the face. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


mention it, and no more shall Bella. And 
now, my dear John, let me congratulate 
you. Your daughter has a high-minded 
lover, who adores her, with a fine estate: 
he has been crying to me, poor fellow, as 
men will to a woman of my age; and if 
you have any respect for my judgment— 
ask him to dinner.”’ 

She added that it might be as well 
if, after dinner, he were to take a little 
nap. 

Admiral Bruce did not fall into these 
views without discussion. I spare the 
reader the dialogue, since he yielded at 
last; only he stipulated that his sister 
should do the dinner, and the subsequent 
siesta. 

Bella returned looking very wistful and 


‘anxious. 


“Come here, niece,’’ said Mrs. Moli- 
“Kneel you at my knee. Now 
Sir Charles has 
loved you, and you only, from the day | 
he first saw you. He loves you now as 
much as ever. Do you love him? ’”’ 

‘Oh, aunt! aunt!’? <A shower of 
kisses, and a tear or two. 

“That is enough. Then dry your 
eyes, and dress your beautiful hair a 
little better than that; for he dines with 
me to-day?” 

Who so bright and happy now as Bella 
Bruce ? 


The dreaded aunt did not stop there. 
She held that after the peep into real life 
Bella Bruce had obtained, for want of a 
mother’s vigilance, she ought to be a 
wife aS soon as possible. So she gave 
Sir Charles a hint that Baden was a 
very good place to be married in; and 
from that moment Sir Charles gave Bella. 
and her father no rest till they consented. 

Little did Richard Bassett, in England, 
dream what was going on at Baden. He 
now surveyed the chimneys of Hunter- 
combe Hall with resignation, and even 
with growing complacency, as chimneys 
that would one day be his, since their 
owner would not be in a hurry to love 
again. He shot Sir Charles’s pheasants 
whenever they strayed into his hedge- 
rows, and he lived moderately and studied 


A TERRIBLE 


health. In a word, content with the re- 
sult of his anonymous letter, he confined 
himself now to cannily out-living the 
wrongful heir—his cousin. 

One fine frosty day the chimneys of 
Huntercombe began to show signs of 
life; vertical columns of blue smoke 
rose in the air, one after another, till 
at last there were about forty going. 

Old servants flowed down from London. 
New ones trickled in, with. their boxes, 
from the country. Carriages were drawn 
out into the stable-yard, horses exercised, 
and a whisper ran that Sir Charles was 
coming to live on his estates, and not 
alone. 

Richard Bassett went about inquiring 
cautiously. 

The rumor spread and was confirmed 
by some little facts. 

At last, one fine day, when the chim- 
neys were all smoking, the church-bells 
began to peal. 

Richard Bassett heard, and went out, 
scowling deeply. Hefound the village all 
agog with expectation. 

Presently there was a loud cheer from 
the steeple, and a flag floated from the 
top of Huntercombe House. Murmurs. 
Distant cheers. Approaching cheers. 
The clatter of horses’ feet. The roll of 
wheels. Huntercombe gates flung wide 
open by a cluster of grooms and keepers. 

Then on came two outriders, ushered by 
loud hurrahs, and followed by a carriage 
and four that dashed through the village 
amid peals of delight from the villagers. 
The carriage was open, and in it sat Sir 
Charles and Bella Bassett. She was 
lovelier than ever; she dazzled the very 
air with her beauty and her glorious hair. 
The hurrahs of the villagers made her 
heart beat; she pressed Sir Charles’s 
hand tenderly, and literally shone with 
joy and pride; and so she swept past 
Richard Bassett; she saw him directly, 
shuddered a moment, and half clung to 
her husband ; then on again, and passed 
through the open gates amid loud cheers. 
She alighted in her own hall, and walked, 
nodding and smiling sunnily, through two 
files of domestics and retainers; and 
thought no more of Richard Bassett 


TEMPTATION. 39 
than some bright bird that has flown 
over a rattlesnake and glanced down at 
him. 


But a gorgeous bird cannot always be 
flying. A snake can sometimes creep 
under her perch, and glare, and keep 
hissing, till she shudders and droops and 
lays her plumage in the dust. 


CHAPTER, 1X. 


GENERALLY deliberate crimes are fol- 
lowed by some great punishment; but 
they are also often attended in their 
course by briefer chastisements—single 
strokes from the whip that holds the 
round dozen inreserve. ‘These precursors 
of the grand expiation are sharp but 
kindly lashes, for they tend to whip the 
man out of the wrong road. 

Such a stroke fell on Richard Bassett : 
he saw Bella Bruce sweep past him, cling- 
ing to her husband, and shuddering at 
himself. For this, then, he had plotted 
and intrigued and written an anonymous 
letter. The only woman he had ever 
loved at all went past him with a look 
of aversion, and was his enemy’s wife, 
and would soon be the mother of that 
enemy’s children, and blot him forever 
out of the coveted inheritance. 

The man crept home, and sat by his 
little fireside, crushed. Indeed, from that 
hour he disappeared, and drank his bitter 
cup alone. 

After a while it transpired in the village 
that he was very ill. The clergyman -went 
to visit him, but was not admitted. The 
only person who got to see him was his 
friend Wheeler, a small but sharp attor- 
ney, by whose advice he acted in country 
matters. This Wheeler was very fond of 
shooting, and could not get acrack at a 
pheasant except on Highmore; and that 
was a bond between him and its pro- 
prietor. It was Wheeler who had first 


40 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


told Bassett not to despair of possessing rabbits in his own hedges. He went out 


the estates, since they had inserted Sir 
Charles’s heir at law in the entail. 

This Wheeler found him now so shrunk 
in body, so pale and haggard in face, and 
dejected in mind, that he was really 
shocked, and asked leave to send a doc- 
tor from a neighboring town. 

“What téddo?’’ said Richard, moodily. 
“It’s my mind; it’s not my body. Ah, 
Wheeler, it is all over. land mine shall 
never have Huntercombe now.”’ | 

“711 tell you what it is,’”? said Wheeler, 
almost angrily, ‘‘ you will have six feet 
by two of it before long if you go on this 
way. Wasever such folly ! to fret your- 
self out of this jolly world because you 
can’t get one particular slice of its upper 
crust. Why, one bit of land is as good as 
another; and I’ll show you how to get 
land—in this neighborhood, too. Ay, 
right under Sir Charles’s nose.’’ 

‘Show me that,’’ said Bassett, gloomily 
and incredulously. 

‘“‘Leave off moping, then, and I will. 
I advise the bank, you know, and ‘Splat- 
chett’s’ farm is mortgaged up to the 
eyes. It is not the only one. I goto the 
village inns, and pick up all the gossip I 
hear there.’’ : 

‘How am I to find money to buy 
land ? ”’ 

““T’ll put you up to that, too; but you 
must leave off moping. Hang it, man, 
never say die. There are plenty of chances 
on the cards. Get your color back, and 
marry a girl with money, and turn that 
nto land. ‘The first thing is to leave off 


grizzling. Why, you are playing the 
enemy’s game. That can’t be right, 
can it?” 


This remark was the first that really 
roused the sick man. 

Wheeler had too few clients to lose one. 
He now visited Bassett almost daily, and, 
being himself full of schemes and inven- 
tions, he got Bassett, by degrees, out of 
his lethargy, and he emerged into day- 
light again; but he looked thin, and yel- 
low as a guinea, and he had turned miser. 
He kept but one servant, and fed her and 
himself at Sir Charles Bassett’s expense. 
He wired that gentleman’s hares and 


the money into a box. 


with his gun every sunny afternoon, and 
shot a brace or two of pheasants, without 
disturbing the rest; for he took no dog 
with him to run and yelp, but a little boy, 
who quietly tapped the hedgerows and 
walked the sunny banks and shaws. They 
never came home empty-handed. 

But on those rarer occasions when Sir 
Charles and his friends beat the Bassett 
woods Richard was sure to make a large 
bag: for he was a cool, unerring shot, and 
flushed the birds in hedgerows, slips of 
underwood, etc., to which the fairer sports- 
men had driven them. 

These birds and the surplus hares he 
always sold in the market-town, and put 
The rabbits he 
ate, and also squirrels, and, above all, 
young hedgehogs: a gypsy taught him 
how to cook them, viz., by inclosing them 
in clay, and baking them in wood embers: 
then the bristles adhere to the burned 
clay, and the meat is juicy. He was his 
own gardener, and vegetables cost him 
next to nothing. 

So he went on through all the winter 
months, and by the spring his health and 
strength were restored. Then he turned 
woodman, cut down every stick of timber 
in a little wood near his house, and sold 
it; and then set to work to grub up the 
roots for fires, and cleared it for tillage. 
The sum he received for the wood was 
much more than he expected, and this he 
made a note of. 

He had a strong body, that could work 
hard all day, a big hate, and a mania for 
the possession of land. And so he led a 
truly Spartan life, and everybody in the 
village said he was mad. 

While he led this hard life Sir Charles 


and Lady Bassett were the gayest of the . 


gay. She was the beauty and the bride. 
Visits and invitations poured in from 
every part of the country. 
flattered by the homage paid to his be- 
loved, made himself younger and less 
fastidious to indulge her; and the happy 
pair often drove twelve miles to dinner, 


and twenty to dine and sleep—an excellent — 


Sir Charles, 


: 


custom in that country, one of whose fa- | 


vorite toasts is worth recording: ‘‘ May 


‘ 


- 


A. TERRIBLE 


YOU DINE WHERE YOU PLEASE, AND SLEEP 
WHERE YOU DINE.”’ 

They were at every ball, and gave one 
or two themselves. 

Above all, they enjoyed society in that 
delightful form which is confined to large 
houses. They would have numerous and 
well-assorted visitors staying at the house 
for a week or so, and all dining at a huge 
round table. But two o’clock P.M. was 
the time to see how hosts and guests en- 
joyed themselves. The hall door of Hun- 
tercombe was ‘approached by a flight of 
stone steps, easy of ascent, and about 
twenty-four feet wide. At the riding 
hour the county ladies used to come, one 
after another, holding up their riding- 
habits with one hand, and perch about 
this gigantic flight of steps like peacocks, 
and chatter like jays, while the servants 
walked their horses about the gravel 
esplanade, and the four-in-hand waited a 
little in the rear. A fine champing of 
bits and fidgeting of thoroughbreds there 
was, till all were ready; then the ladies 
would each put out her little foot, with 
charming nonchalance, to the nearest 
gentleman or groom, with a slight pref- 
erence for the grooms, who were more 
practiced. The man lifted, the lady 
sprang at the same time, and into her 
saddle like a bird—Lady Bassett on a 
very quiet pony, or in the carriage to 
please some dowager—and away they 
clattered. in high spirits, a regular cav- 
alcade. It was a hunting county, and 
_the ladies rode well; square seat, light 
hand on the snaffle, the curb reserved for 
cases of necessity ; and, when they had 
patted the horse on the neck at starting, 
as all these coaxing creatures must, they 
rode him with that well-bred ease and un- 
consciousness of being on a horse which 
distinguishes ladies who have ridden all 
their lives from the gawky snobbesses in 
Hyde Park, who ride, if riding it can be 
called, with their elbows uncouthly fast- 
ened to their sides as if by a rope, their 
hands at the pit of their stomachs, and 
both those hands, as heavy as a house- 
maid’s, sawing the poor horse with curb 
and snaffle at once, while the whole body 
breathes pretension and affectation, and 


TEMPTATION. 41 


seems to say, ‘‘Look at me; I am on 
horseback! Be startled at that—as I 
am! and I have had lessons from a rid- 
ing-master. He has taught me how a 
lady should ride ’’—in his opinion, poor 
devil. 

The champing, the pawing, the mount- 
ing, and the clattering of these bright 
cavalcades, with the music of the women 
excited by motion, furnished a picture of 
wealth and gayety and happy country 
life that cheered the whole neighborhood, 
and contrasted strangely with the stern 
Spartan life of him who had persuaded 
himself he was the rightful owner of Hun- 
tercombe Hall. 

Sir Charles Bassett was a magistrate, 
and soon found himself a bad one. One 
day he made a little mistake, which, ow- 
ing to his popularity, was very gently 
handled by the Bench at their weekly 
meeting; but still Sir Charles was 
ashamed and mortified. He wrote di- 
rectly to Oldfield for law books, and that 
gentleman sent him an excellent selec- 
tion bound in smooth calf. 

Sir Charles now studied three hours 
every day, except hunting days, when no 
squire can work; and as his study was 
his justice room, he took care to find an 
authority before he acted. He was natu- 
rally humane, and rustic offenders, espe- 
cially poachers and runaway farm serv- 
ants, used to think themselves fortunate 
if they were taken before him, and not 
before Squire Powys, who was sure to 
give them the sharp edge of the law. 
So now Sir Charles was useful as well as 
ornamental. 

Thus passed fourteen months of happi- 
ness, with only one little cloud—there 
was no sign yet of a son and heir. But 
let a man be ever so powerful, it is an 
awkward thing to have a bitter, invet- 
erate enemy at his door watching for a 
chance. Sir Charles began to realize this 
in the sixteenth month of his wedded bliss. 
A small estate called ‘‘ Splatchett’s ’’ lay 
on his north side, and a marginal strip of 
this property ran right into a wood of his. 
This strip was wretched land, and the 
owner, unable to raise any wheat crop on 
it, had planted it with larches. 


42 WORKS 
Sir Charles had made him a liberal 
offer for ‘‘ Splatchett’s ’’ about six years 
ago; but he had refused point-blank, 
being then in good circumstances. 

Sir Charles now received a hint from 
one of his own gamekeepers that the old 
farmer was in a bad way, and talked of 
selling. So Sir Charles called on him, 
and asked him if he would sell ‘‘ Splat- 
chett’s’’ now. ‘‘ Why, I can’t sell it 
twice,’’ said the old man, testily. ‘‘ You 
ha’ got it, han’t ye?’’ It turned out 
that Richard Bassett had been before- 
hand. The bank had pressed for their 
money, and threatened foreclosure ; then 
Bassett had stepped in with a good price; 
and although the conveyance was not 
signed, a stamped agreement was, and 
neither vender nor purchaser could go 
back. What made it more galling, the 
proprietor was not aware of the feud be- 
tween the Bassetts, and had thought to 
please Sir Charles by selling to one of his 
name. 

Sir Charles Bassett went home seri- 
ously vexed. He did not mean to tell his 
wife ; but love’s eye read his face, love’s 
arm went round his neck, and love’s soft 
voice and wistful eyes soon coaxed it out 
of him. ‘‘ Dear Charles,’’ said she, ‘‘ never 
mind. Itzs mortifying; but think how 
much you have, and how little that wicked 
man has. Let him have that farm; he 
has lost his self-respect, and that is worth 
a great many farms. For my part, I pity 
the poor wretch. Let him try to annoy 
you; your wife will try, against him, to 
make you happy, my own beloved; and I 
think I may prove as strong as Mr. 
Bassett,’’ said she, with a look of inspi- 
ration. 

Her sweet and tender sympathy soon 
healed so slight a scratch. 

But they had not done with ‘ Splat- 
chett’s’’ yet. Just after Christmas Sir 
Charles invited three gentlemen to beat 
his more distant preserves. Their guns 
bellowed in quick succession through the 
woods, and at last they reached North 
Wood. Here they expected splendid 
shooting, as a great many cock pheas- 
ants had already been seen running 
ahead. 


2 


OF CHARLES RHADE. 


But when they got to the end of the 
wood they found Lawyer Wheeler stand- 
ing against a tree just within ‘‘Splat- 
chett’s’’ boundary, and one of their own 
beaters reported that two boys were sta- 
tioned in the road, each tapping two sticks 
together to confine the pheasants to that 
strip of land, on which the low larches 
and high grass afforded a strong covert. 

Sir Charles halted on his side of the 
boundary. 

Then Wheeler told his man to beat, and 
up got the cock pheasants,’one after an- 
other. Whenever a pheasant whirred up 
the man left off beating. 

The lawyer knocked down four brace in 
no time, and those that escaped him and 
turned back for the wood were brought 
down by Bassett, firing from the hard 
road. Only those were spared that flew 
northward into ‘“ Splatchett’s.’’ It was 
a veritable slaughter, planned with judg- 
ment, and carried out in a most ungentle- 
manlike and unsportsmanlike manner. 

It goaded Sir Charles beyond his pa- 
tience. After several vain efforts to re- 
strain himself, he shouldered his gun, 
and, followed by his friends, went burst- 
ing through the larches to Richard Bas- 
sett. 

‘Mr. Bassett,’’ said he, ‘‘ this is most 
ungentlemanly conduct.”’ 

‘““What is the matter, sir? 
your ground ?”’ 

‘“No, but you are taking a mean ad- 
vantage of our being out. Who ever 
heard of a gentleman beating his bound- 
aries the very day a neighbor was out 
shooting, and filling them with his 
game ?’’ 

‘Oh, that is it, is it? When justice is 
against you you can talk of law, and 
when law is against you you appeal to 
justice. Let us be in one story or the 
other, please. The Huntercombe estates 
belong to me by birth. You have got 
them by legal trickery. Keep them while 
you live. They will come to me one day, 
you know. Meantime, leave me my little 
estate of ‘Splatchett’s.’ For shame, sir; 
you have robbed me of my inheritance 
and my sweetheart; do you grudge me 
a few cock pheasants? Why, you have 


Am I on 


A TERRIBLE 


made me so poor they are an object to me 
now.”’ 

‘«*Oh!’’ said Sir Charles, “‘if you are 
stealing my game to keep body and soul 
together, I pity you. In that case, per- 
haps you will let my friends help you fill 
your larder.”’ 

Richard Bassett hesitated a moment ; 
but Wheeler, who had drawn hear at the 
sound of the raised voices, made him a 
signal to assent. 

“By all means,’”’ said he, adroitly. 
“Mr. Markham, your father often shot 
with mine over the Bassett estates. You 
are welcome to poor little ‘Splatchett’s.’ 
Keep your men off, Sir Charles; they are 
noisy bunglers, and do more harm than 
good. Here, Tom! Bill! beat for the 
gentlemen. They shall have the sport. 

I only want the birds.”’ 
- Sir Charles drew back, and saw pheas- 
ant after pheasant thunder and whiz into 
the air, then collapse at a report, and 
fall like lead, followed by a shower of 
feathers. : 

His friends seemed to be deserting him 
for Richard Bassett. He left them in 
charge of his keepers, and went slowly 
home. 

He said nothing to Lady Bassett till 
night, and then she got it all from him. 
She was very indignant at many of the 
things; but as for Sir Charles, all his 
eousin’s arrows glided off that high- 
minded gentleman, except one, and that 
quivered in his heart. ‘‘ Yes, Bella,’’ said 
he, ‘‘he told me he should inherit these 
estates. That is because we are not 
blessed with children.”’ 

Lady Bassett sighed. ‘‘ But we shall 
be some day. Shall we not? ”’ 

“God knows,”’ said Sir Charles, gloom- 
ily. ‘‘ Il wonder whether there was really 
anything unfair done on our side when 
the entail was cut off ? ”’ 

“Ts that likely,.dearest ? Why?” 

** Heaven seems to be on his side.” 

**On the side of a wicked man ?”’ 

“ But he may be the father of innocent 
children.”’ 

“Why, he is not even married.” 

«He will marry. He will not throw a 
chance away. It makes my head dizzy, 


TEMPTATION. 43 
and my heart sick. Bella, now I can un- 
derstand two enemies meeting alone in 
some solitary place, and one killing the 
other in a moment of rage; for when this 
scoundrel insulted me I remembered his 
anonymous letter, and all his relentless 
malice. Bella, I could have raised my 
gun and shot him like a weasel.”’ 

Lady Bassett screamed faintly, and 
flune her arms round his neck. ‘Oh, 
Charles, pray to God against such 
thoughts. You shall never go near 
that man again. Don’t think of our one 
disappointment: think of all the blessings 
we enjoy. Never mind that wretched 
man’s hate. Think of your wife’s love. 
Have I not more power to make you 
happy than he has to afflict you, my 
adored ?’’ These sweet words were ac- 
companied by a wife’s divine caresses, 
with the honey of her voice, and the liquid 
sunshine of her loving eyes. Sir Charles 
slept peacefully that night, and forgot his 
one grief and his one enemy for a time. 

Not so Lady Bassett. She lay awake 
all night and thought deeply of Richard 
Bassett and ‘‘his unrelenting, impenitent 
malice.’? Women of her fine fiber, when 
they think long and earnestly on one 
thing, have often divinations. The dark 
future seems to be ht a moment at a time 
by flashes of lightning, and they discern 
the indistinct form of events to come. 
And so it was with Lady Bassett: in the 
stilly night a terror of the future and of 
Richard Bassett crept over her—a terror 
disproportioned to his past acts and ap- 
parent power. Perhaps she was oppressed 
by having an enemy—she, who was born 
to be loved. Atall events, she was full of 
feminine divinations and forebodings, and 
saw, by flashes, many a poisoned arrow 
fly from that quiver and strike the beloved 
breast. It had already discharged one 
that had parted them for a time, and 
nearly killed Sir Charles. 

Daylight cleared away much of this 
dark terror, but left a sober dread and 
a strange resolution. This timid creat- 
ure, Stimulated by love, determined to 
watch the foe, and defend her husband 
with all her little power. All manner of 
devices passed: through her head, but were 


44 


rejected, because, if Love said “Do won- 
ders,’’ Timidity said ‘‘ Do nothing that 
you have not seen other wives do.’’ So 
she remained, scheming, and longing, and 
fearing, and passive, all day. But the 
next day she conceived a vague idea, and, 
all in a heat, rang for her maid. While 
the maid was coming she fell to blushing 
at her own boldness, and, just as the maid 
opened the door, her thermometer fell so 
low that—she sent her upstairs for a piece 
of work. Oh, lame and impotent conclu- 
sion ! 

Just before luncheon she chanced to 
look through a window, and to see the 
head gamekeeper crossing the park, and 
coming to the house. Now this was the 
very man she wanted to speak to. The 
sudden temptation surprised her out of 
her timidity. She rang the bell again, 
and sent for the man. 

That Colossus wondered in his mind, 
and felt uneasy at an invitation so novel. 
However, he clattered into the morning- 
room, in his velveteen coat, and leathern 
gaiters up to his thigh, pulled his front 
hair, bobbed his head, and then stood 
firm in body as was he of Rhodes, but in 
mind much abashed at finding himself in 
her ladyship’s presence. 

The lady, however, did not prove so 
very terrible. ‘‘ May Linquire your name, 
sir? ’’? said she, very respectfully. 

‘*Moses Moss, my lady.’’ 

“Mr. Moss, I wish to ask you a ques- 
tion ortwo. May 1?” 

“That you may, my lady.’’ 

“‘T want you to explain, if you will be 
so good, how the proprietor of ‘Splat- 
chett’s ’ can shoot all Sir Charles’s pheas- 
ants.”’ 

‘Lord ! my lady, we ain’t come down 
to that. But he do shoot more than his 
share, that’s sure an’ sartain. Well, my 
lady, if you please, game is just like Chris- 
tians : it will make for sunny spots. High. 
more has got a many of them there, with 
good cover; so we breeds for him. As 
for ‘ Splatchett’s,’ that don’t hurt we, my 
lady; it is all arable land and dead 
hedges, with no bottom ; only there’s one 
little tongue of it runs into North Wood, 
and planted with larch; and, if you 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


please, my lady, there is always a kind 
of coarse grass grows under young 
larches, and makes a strong cover for 
game. So, beat North Wood which way 
you will, them artful old cocks will run 
ahead of ye, or double back into them 
larches. And you see Mr. Bassett is not» 
a gentleman, like Sir Charles; he is al- 
ways a-mouching about, and the biggest 
poacher inthe parish; and so he drops on 
to ’em out of bounds.”’ 

‘Ts there no way of stopping all this, 
Sint 

“We might station a dozen beaters 
ahead. They would most likely get shot; 
but I don’t think as they’d mind that 
much if you had set your heart on it, my 
lady. Dall’d if I would, for one.”’ 

‘©Oh, Mr. Moss! Heaven forbid that 
any man should be shot for me. No, not 
for all the pheasants in the world. Ill 
try and think of some other way. I 
should like to see the place. May 1?”’ 

“* Yes, my lady, and welcome.’’ 

‘* How shall I get to it, sir? ”’ 

‘You can ride to the ‘Woodman’s 
Rest.’ my lady, and it is scarce a stone’s- 
throw from there; but ’tis baddish trav- 
eling for the likes of you.”’ 

She appointed an hour, rode with her 
groom to the public-house, and thence 
was conducted through bush, through 
brier, to the place where her husband 
had been so annoyed. 

Moss’s comments became very intelli- 
gible to her the moment she saw the 
place. She said very little, however, and 
rode home. 

Next day she blushed high, and asked 
Sir Charles for a hundred pounds to spend 
upon herself. 

Sir Charles smiled, well pleased, and 
gave it her, and a kiss into the bargain. 

Ant ibut., ppsaldasnes: “thateis not 
EWE | 

“Tam glad of it. You spend too little 
money on yourself—a great deal too 
little.’’ 

‘*That is a complaint you won’t have 
long to make. I want to cut down a few 
trees. May 1?’’ 

‘¢ Going to build ? ”’ 

‘‘Don’t ask me. It is for myself.’’ 


A THRRIBLE 


‘That is enough. Cut 
stick on the estate if you like. 
it leaves us the better.”’ 

‘¢ Ah, Charles, you promised me not. I 
shall cut with great discretion, I assure 
you.”’ 

‘““As you please,’ said Sir Charles. 
“Tf you want to make me happy, deny 
yourself nothing. Mind, I shall be angry 
if you do.”’ 

Soon after this a gaping quidnunc 
came to Sir Charles and told him 
Lady Bassett was felling trees in North 
Wood. 

«And pray who has a better right to 
fell trees in any wood of mine?”’ 

‘* But she is building a wall.’’ 

“¢ And who has a better right to build a 
wall ?”’ 

With the delicacy of a gentleman he 
would not go near the place after this till 
she asked him; and that was not long. 
She came into his study, all beaming, and 
invited him to a ride. She took him into 
North Wood, and showed him her work. 
Richard Bassett’s plantation, hitherto di- 
vided from North Wood only by a bound- 
ary scarcely visible, was now shut off by 
a brick wall: on Sir Charles’s side of that 
wall every stick of timber was felled and 
removed for a distance of fifty yards, 
and about twenty yards from the wall a 
belt of larches was planted, a little higher 
than cabbages. 

Sir Charles looked amazed at first, but 
soon observed how thoroughly his enemy 
was defeated. ‘‘My poor Bella,’’ said 
he, ‘‘to think of your taking all this 
trouble about such a thing !’’ Hestopped 
to kiss her very tenderly, and she shone 
with joy and innocent pride. ‘‘ And I 
never thought of this! You astonish me, 
Bella.”’ 

“‘ Ay,’ said she, in high spirits now; 
‘“‘and, what is more, I have astonished 
Mr. Moss. He said, ‘I wish I had your 
head-piece, my lady.’ I could have told 
him Love sharpens a woman’s wits; but 
I reserved that little adage for you.’’ 

“It’s all mighty fine, fair lady, but you 
have told me a fib. You said it was to 
be all for yourself, and got a hundred 
pounds out of me.”’ 


down every 
The barer 


TEMPTATION. 45 
“And so it was for myself, you silly 
thing. Are you not myself ? and the part 
of myself Ilove the best? ’’ And her sup- 
ple wrist was round his neck in a moment. 
They rode home together, like lovers, 
and comforted each other. 


Richard Bassett, with Wheeler’s as- 
sistance, had borrowed money on High- 
more to buy ‘‘Splatchett’s’’; he now 
borrowed money on ‘‘ Splatchett’s,’’ and 
bought Dean’s Wood —a wood, with 
patches of grass, that lay on the east 
of Sir Charles’s boundary. He gave 
seventeen hundred pounds for it, and 
sold two thousand pounds’ worth of tim- 
ber off it the first year. This sounds in- 
credible; but, owing to the custom of 
felling only ripe trees, landed proprietors 
had no sure clew to the value of all the 
timber on an acre. Richard Bassett had 
found this out, and bought Dean’s Wood 
upon the above terms—7.e., the vender 
gave him the soil and three hundred 
pounds gratis. He grubbed the roots and 
sold them for fuel, and planted larches to 
catch the overflow of Sir Charles’s game. 
The grass grew beautifully, now the trees 
were down, and he let it for pasture. 

He then, still under Wheeler’s advice, 
came out into the world again, improved 
his dress, and called on several county 
families, with a view to marrying money. 

Now in the country they do not despise 
a poor gentleman of good lineage, and 
Bassett was one of the oldest names in 
the county; so every door was open to 
him ; and, indeed, his late hermit life had 
stimulated some curiosity. This he soon 
turned to sympathy, by telling them that 
he was proud but poor. Robbed of the 
vast estates that belonged to him by 
birth, he had been unwilling to take a 
lower position. However, Heaven had 
prospered him; the wrongful heir was 
childless ; he was the heir at law, and felt | 
he owed it to the estate, which must re- 
turn to his line, to assume a little more 
public importance than he had done. 

Wherever he was received he was sure 
to enlarge upon his wrongs ; and he was 
believed ; for he was notoriously the di- 
rect heir to Bassett and Huntercombe, 


46 WORKS 


but the family arrangement by which his 
father had been bought out was known 
only toafew. He readily obtained sym- 
pathy, and many persons were disgusted 
at Sir Charles’s illiberality in not making 
him some compensation. To use the 
homely expression of Govett, a small 
proprietor, the baronet might as_ well 
have given him back one pig out of his 
own farrow—.e., one of the many farms 
comprised in that large estate. 

Sir Charles learned that Richard was 
undermining him in the county, but was 
too proud to interfere ; he told Lady Bas- 
sett he should say nothing until some 
gentleman should indorse Mr. Bassett’s 
falsehoods. 

One day Sir Charles and Lady Bassett 
were invited to dine and sleep at Mr. 
Hardwicke’s, distance fifteen miles ; they 
went, and found Richard Bassett dining 
there, by Mrs. Hardwicke’s invitation, 
who was one of those ninnies that fling 
guests together with no discrimination. 

Richard had expected this to happen 
sooner or later, so he was comparatively 
prepared, and bowed stiffly to Sir Charles. 
Sir Charles stared at him in return. This 
was observed. People were uncomfort- 
able, especially Mrs. Hardwicke, whose 
thoughtlessness was to blame for it all. 

At a very early hour Sir Charles or- 
dered his carriage, and drove home, 
instead of staying all night. 

Mrs. Hardwicke, being a fool, must 
make a little more mischief. She blub- 
bered to her husband, and he wrote Sir 
Charles a remonstrance. 

Sir Charles replied that he was the only 
person aggrieved ; Mr. Hardwicke ought 
not to have invited a blackguard to meet 
him. 

Mr. Hardwicke replied that he had 
never heard a Bassett called a_ black- 
guard before, and had seen nothing in 
Mr. Bassett to justify an epithet so un- 
usual among gentlemen. ‘‘ And, to be 
frank with you, Sir Charles,’’ said he, ‘‘I 
think this bitterness against a poor gen- 
tleman, whose estates you are so fortu- 
-nate as to possess, is not consistent with 
your general character, and is, indeed, un- 
worthy of you.”’ 


OF CHARLES READE. 


To this Sir Charles Bassett replied : 


“DEAR Mr. HARDWICKE—You have 
applied some remarks to me which I will 
endeavor to forget, as they were written 
in entire ignorance of the truth. But if 
we are to remain friends, I expect you to 
believe me when I tell you that Mr. Rich- 
ard Bassett has never been wronged by 
me or mine, but has wronged me and 
Lady Bassett deeply. He is a dishonor- 
able scoundrel, not entitled to be received 
in society; and if, after this assurance, 
you receive him, I shall never darken 
your doors again. So please let me know 
your decision. 

“TI remain 
“Yours truly, 
‘‘ CHARLES DYKE BASSETT.”’ 


Mr. Hardwicke chafed under this; but 
Prudence stepped in. He was one of the 
county members, and Sir Charles could 
command three hundred votes. 

He wrote back to say he had received 
Sir Charles’s letter with pain, but, of 
course, he could not disbelieve him, and 
therefore he should invite Mr. Bassett no 
more till the matter was cleared. 

But Mr. Hardwicke, thus brought to 
book, was nettled at his own meanness ; 
so he sent Sir Charles’s letter to Mr. 
Richard Bassett. 

Bassett foamed with rage, and wrote 
a long letter, raving with insults, to Sir 
Charles. 

He was in the act of directing it when 
Wheeler called on him. Bassett showed 
him Sir Charles’s letter. Wheeler read it. 

‘“Now read what I say to him in re- 
Piya 

Wheeler read Bassett’s letter, threw 
it into the fire, and kept it there with the 
poker. 

wacky 4 scalled,’’ saide vheweomy ty. 
‘Saved you a thousand pounds or so. 
You must not write a letter without 
me.”’ 

‘What, am I to sit still and be in- 
sulted? You’re a pretty friend.”’ 

‘‘T am a wise friend. This is a more 
serious matter than you seem to think.”’ 

< Libel 7-2 


A TERRIBLE 


‘*Of course. Why, if Sir Charles had 
consulted me, I could not have dictated a 
better letter. It closes every chink a de- 
fendant in libel can creep out by. Now 
take your pen and write to Mr. Hard- 
wicke.”’ 


“DEAR SrrR—I have received your let- 
ter, containing a libel written by Sir 
Charles Bassett. My reply will be public. 

“¢ Yours very truly, 
‘RICHARD BASSETT.”’ 


‘“Is that all?” 

‘‘Every syllable. Now mind; you 
never go to Hardwicke House again; 
Sir Charles has got you banished from 
that house; special damage! There 
never was a prettier case for a jury— 
the rightful heir foully slandered by the 
possessor of his hereditary estates.” 

This picture excited Bassett, and he 
walked about raving with malice, and 
longing for the time when he should 
stand in the witness-box and denounce 
his enemy. 

‘““No, no,’ said Wheeler, ‘‘leave that 
to counsel; you must play the mild vic- 
tim in the witness-box. Who is the de- 
fendant solicitor? We ought to serve 
the writ on him at once.’’ 

‘““No, no ; serve it on himself.’’ 

«What for? Much better proceed like 
gentlemen.’’ 

Bassett got in a passion at being con- 
tradicted in everything. ‘I tell you,”’ 
said he, **the more | can irritate and 
exasperate this villain the better. Be- 
sides, he slandered me behind my back; 
and I’ll have the writ served upon him- 
self. Dll do everything I can to take 
him down. If a man wants to be my 
lawyer he must enter into my feelings a 
little.’’ 

Wheeler, to whom he was more valu- 
able than ever now, consented somewhat 
reluctantly, and called at Huntercombe 
Hall next day with the writ, and sent in 
his card. 

Lady Bassett heard of this, and asked 
if it was Mr. Bassett’s friend. 

The butler said he thought it was. 

Lady Bassett went to Sir Charles in his 


instead of you. 


TEMPTATION. AT 
study. ‘‘Oh, my dear,’”’ said she, “here 
is Mr. Bassett’s lawyer.’’ 

PNY elu Re 

‘*Why does he come here? ”’ 

‘‘7 don’t know.”’ 

“‘ Don’t see him.’’ 

“Why not? ”’ 

‘‘T am so afraid of Mr. Bassett. He is 
our evil genius. Let me see this person 
May 1?”’ 

‘¢ Certainly not.” 

‘‘ Might I see him first, love ?”’ 

‘* You will not see him at all.”’ 

“‘Charles! ”’ 

“No, Bella; I cannot have these ani- 
mals talking to my wife.”’ 

** But, dear love, I am so full of fore- 
bodings. You know, Charles, I don’t 
often presume to meddle; but I am in 
torture about this man. If you receive 
him, may I be with you? Then we shall 
be two to one.’’ 

“No, no,” said Sir Charles, testily. 
Then, seeing her beautiful eyes fill at the 
refusal and the unusual tone, he relented. 
‘““You may be in hearing if you like. 
Open that door, and sit in the little 
room.”’ 

‘¢Oh, thank you !”’ 

She stepped into the room—a very 
small sitting-room. She had never been 
in it before, and while she was examining 
it, and thinking how she could improve 
its appearance, Mr. Wheeler was shown 
into the study. Sir Charles received him 
standing, to intimate that the interview 
must be brief. This, and the time he had 
been kept waiting in the hall, roused 
Wheeler’s bite, and he entered on his 
subject more bruskly than he had _ in- 
tended. 

‘Sir Charles Bassett, you wrote a let- 
ter to Mr. Hardwicke, reflecting on my 
client, Mr. Bassett—a most unjustifiable 
letter.”’ 

“Keep your opinion to yourself, sir. 
I wrote a letter, calling him what he is.”’ 

‘‘No, sir; that letter is a libel.”’ 

“It is the truth.”’ 

‘‘It is a malicious libel, sir; and we 
shall punish vou for it. I hereby serve 
you with this copy of a writ. Damages, 
five thousand pounds.’’ 


48 WORKS 


OF CHARLES 


READE. 


A sigh from the next room passed un- | swift ingenuity of woman’s love, had 


noticed by the men, for their voices were 
now raised in anger. 

‘And so that is what you came here 
for. Why did you not go to my solic- 
itor? You must be as great a blackguard 
as your client, to serve your paltry writs 
on me in my own house.”’ 

“Not blackguard enough to insult a 
gentleman in my own house. If you had 
been civil I might have accommodated 
matters; but now I’ll make you smart— 
Wh OSB 

Nothing provokes a high-spirited man 
more than amenace. Sir Charles, threat- 
ened in his wife’s hearing, shot out his 
right arm with surprising force and ra- 
pidity, and knocked Wheeler down in a 
moment. 

In came Lady Bassett, with a scream, 
and saw the attorney lying doubled up, 
and Sir Charles standing over him, blow- 
ing like a grampus with rage and excite- 
ment. 

But the next moment he staggered and 
gasped, and she had to support him to a 
Seat. She rang the bell for aid, then 
kneeled, and took his throbbing temples 
to her wifely bosom. 

Wheeler picked himself up, and, seated 
on his hams, eyed the pair with concen- 
trated fury. 

‘““Aha! You have hurt yourself more 
than me. Two suits against you now in- 
stead of one.”’ 


‘* Conduct this person from the house,”’ 


said Lady Bassett to a servant who en- 
tered at that moment. 

‘All right. my lady,’’ said Wheeler ; 
‘*T’ll remind you of that word when this 
house belongs to us.”’ 


CHAPTER X. 


WITH this bitter reply Wheeler retired 
precipitately ; the shaft pierced but one 


bosom; for the devoted wife, with the 


put both her hands right over her hus- 
band’s ears that he might hear no more 
insults. 

Sir Charles very nearly had a fit; but 
his wife loosened his neckcloth, caressed 
his throbbing head, and applied eau-de- 
Cologne to his nostrils. He got better, 
but felt dizzy for about an hour. She 
made him come into her room and lie 
down ; she hung over him, curling as a 
vine and light asa bird, and her kisses 
lit softly as down upon his eyes, and her 
words of love and pity murmured music 
in his ears till he slept, and that danger 
passed. 

For a day or two after this both Sir 
Charles and Lady Bassett avoided the 
unpleasant subject. But it had to be 
faced ; so Mr. Oldfield was summoned to 
Huntercombe, and all engagements given 
up for the day, that he might dine alone 
with them and talk the matter over. 

Sir Charles thought he could justify ; 
but when it came to the point he could 
only prove that Richard had done several 
ungentleman-like things of a nature a 
stout jury would consider trifles. 

Mr. Oldfield said of course they must 
enter an appearance ; and, this done, the 
wisest course would be to let him see 
Wheeler, and try to compromise the suit. 
*‘ Tt will cost you a thousand pounds, Sir 
Charles, I dare say ; but if it teaches you 
never to write of an enemy or to an enemy 
without showing your lawyer the letter 
first, the lesson will be cheap. Some- 
body in the Bible says, ‘Oh, that mine 
enemy would write a book!’ I say, ‘Oh, 
that he would write a _ letter—without 
consulting his solicitor.”’ 

It was Lady Bassett’s cue now to make 
light of troubles. ‘* What does it mat- 
ter, Mr. Oldfield? All they want is 
money. Yes, offer them a _ thousand 
pounds to leave him in peace.’’ 

So next day Mr. Oldfield called on 
Wheeler, all smiles and civility, and 
asked him if he did not think it a pity 
cousins should quarrel before the whole 
county. 

“A great pity,’’ said Wheeler. 
my client has no alternative. 


* But 
No gentle- 


WW. 
N a BY 


\\’ \ 


. on 
AAKAQAAS SE Sk, 


‘*ONLY THINK—HE HAD A FIT, AND ALL FOR ME! WHAT SHALL I Do ?” 
—A Terrible Temptation, Chapter VIII. 


READE, Volume Eight. 


a FE, 


A TERRIBLE 


man in the county would speak to him if 
he sat quiet under such contumely.”’ 

After beating about the bush the usual 
time, Oldfield said that Sir Charles was 
hungry for litigation, but that Lady Bas- 
sett was averse to it. ‘‘In short, Mr. 
Wheeler, I will try and get Mr. Bassett 
a thousand pounds to forego this scan- 
dal.”’ 

**T willconsult him, and let you know,”’ 
said Wheeler. ‘‘ He happens to be in the 
town.”’ 

Oldfield called again in an_ hour. 
Wheeler told him a thousand pounds 
would be accepted, with a written apol- 
ogy. 

Oldfield shook his head. ‘‘ Sir Charles 
will never write an apology: right or 
wrong, he is too sincere in his convic- 
tion.” 

«« He will never get a jury to share it.”’ 

“You must not be too sure of that. 
You don’t know the defense.’’ 

Oldfield said this with a gravity which 
did him credit. 

“Do you know it yourself? ”’ said the 
other keen hand. 

Mr. Oldfield smiled haughtily, but said 
nothing. Wheeler had hit the mark. 

‘By the by,”’ said the latter, ‘“‘ there 
is another little matter. Sir Charles as- 
saulted me for doing my duty to my 
client. I mean to sue him. Here is the 
writ ; will you accept service ? ”’ 

‘*Oh, certainly, Mr. Wheeler; and 1 
am glad to find you do not make a habit 
of serving writs on gentlemen in person.”’ 

‘Of course not. Idid it on a single 
occasion, contrary to my own wish, and 
went in person—to soften the blow—in- 
stead of sending my clerk.”’ 

After this little spar, the two artists in 
law bade each other farewell with every 
demonstration of civility. 

Sir Charles would not apologize. 

The plaintiff filed his declaration. 

The defendant pleaded not guilty, but 
did not disclose a defense. The law al- 
lows a defendant in libel this advantage. 

Plaintiff joined issue, and the trial was 

xt down for the next assizes. 

Sir Charles was irritated, but nothing 
more. Lady Bassett, with a woman’s 


a 
¢ 


TEMPTATION. 49 
natural shrinking from publicity, felt it 
more deeply. She would have given 
thousands of her own money to keep the 
matter out of court. But her very terror 
of Richard Bassett restrained her. She 
was always thinking about him, and had 
convinced herself he was the ablest vil- 
lain in the wide world; and she thought 
to herself, “‘ If, with his small means, he 
annoys Charles so, what would he do if I 
were to enrich him? He would crush 
Vichee . 

As the trial drew near she began to 
hover about Sir'Charles in his study, like 
an anxious hen. The maternal yearnings 
were awakened in her by marriage, and 
she had no child; so her Charles in 
trouble was husband and child. 

Sometimes she would come in and just 
kiss his forehead, and run out again, 
casting back a celestial look of love at 
the door, and, though it was her husband 
she had kissed, she blushed divinely. At 
last one day she crept in and said, very 
timidly, ‘‘ Charles dear, the anonymous 
letter—is not that an excuse for libeling 
him—as they call telling the truth ? ”’ 

“Why, of course it is. Have you got 
Loses 4 

‘* Dearest, the brave lady took it away.’’ 

‘The brave lady! Who is that?” 

‘“Why, the lady that came with Mr. 
Oldfield and pleaded your cause with 
papa — oh, so eloquently! Sometimes 
when I think of it now I feel almost jeal- 
ous. Who is she? ”’ 

‘From what you have always told me, 
I think it was the Sister of Charity who 
nursed me.’’ 

‘You silly thing, she was no Sister of 
Charity ; that was only put on. Charles, 
tell me the truth. What does it matter 
now ? It was some lady who loved you.”’ 

‘* Loved me, and set her wits to work 
to marry me to you?”’ : 

“Women’s love is so disinterested — 
sometimes.”’ 

‘““ No. no; she told me she was a sister 
, and nodoubt that is the truth.”’ 

‘< A sister of whom ?’’ 

‘*No matter: don’t remind me of the 
past; it is odious tome; and, on second 


of 


thoughts, rather than stir up all that 


50 


the 
get 


mud, it would be better not to use 
anonymous letter, even if you could 
it again.’’ ; 

Lady Bassett begged him to take ad- 
vice on that; meantime she would try to 
get the letter, and also the evidence that 
Richard Bassett wrote it. 

‘*T see no harm sim) that) 1said: pir 
Charles; ‘‘only confine your communi- 
cation to Mr. Oldfield. I will not have 
you speaking or writing to a woman I 
don’t know: and the more I think of her 
conduct the less I understand it.”’ 

«There are people who do good by 
stealth,’’ suggested Bella timidly. 

<< Fiddledeedee !’’ replied Sir Charles ; 
‘you are a goose—I mean an angel.”’ 

Lady Bassett comphed with the letter, 
but, goose or not, evaded the spirit of 
Sir Charles’s command with considerable 
dexterity. 


«“ DEAR MR. OLDFIELD— You may guess 
what trouble I am in. Sir Charles will 
soon have to appear in open court, and be 
talked against by some great orator. 
That anonymous letter Mr. Bassett wrote 
me was very base. and is surely some 
justification of the violent epithets my 
dear husband, in an unhappy moment 
of irritation, has applied to him. The 
brave lady has it. I am sure she will 
not refuse to send it me. I wish I dare 
ask her to give it me with her own hand ; 
but I must not, I suppose. Pray tell her 
how unhappy Iam, and perhaps she will 
favor us with a word of advice as well as 
the letter. 

‘‘] remain, yours faithfully, 
““ BELLA BASSETT. ”’ 


This letter was written at the brave 
lady ; and Mr. Oldfield did what was ex- 
pected, he sent Miss Somerset a copy of 
Lady Bassett’s letter, and some lines in 
his own hand, describing Sir Charles’s 
difficulty in a more businesslike way. 

In due course Miss Somerset wrote him 
back that she was in the country, hunt- 
ing, at no very great distance from Hun- 
tercombe Hall; she would sent up to town 
for her desk; the letter would be there, if 
she had kept it at all. : 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


Oldfield groaned at this cool conjecture, 
and wrote back directly, urging expedi- 
tion. 

This produced an effect that he had not 
anticipated. 

One morning Lord Harrowdale’s fox- 
hounds met at a large covert, about five 
miles from Huntercombe, and Sir Charles 
told Lady Bassett she must ride to cover. 

“Yes, dear. Charles, love, I have no 
spirit to appear in public. We shall soon 
have publicity enough.’’ 

“That is my reason. I have not done 
nor said anything Iam ashamed of, and 
you will meet the county on this and on 
every public occasion.”’ 

‘Tl obey,”’ said Bella. 

‘* And look your best.’’ 

“‘1 will, dearest.”’ 

‘* And be in good spirits.’ 

*« Mustid 2.7? 

ie) WeOmen: 

‘‘T will try. Oh !—oh !—oh!”’ 

“Why, you poor-spirited little goose ! 
Dry your eyes this moment.”’ 


fThere, \Ghhal? 
“* And kiss me.”’ 
‘‘There. Ah! kissing you is a great 


comfort.”’ 

‘“It is one you are particularly welcome 
to. Now runaway and put on your habit. 
I’ll have two grooms out ; one with afresh 
horse for me, and one to look after you.”’ 

“Oh, Charles! Pray don’t make me 
hunt.’’ 

SF Nos; 
hang it all 

‘Do you know what I do while you are 
hunting? I pray all the time that you 
may not get a fall and be hurt; and I 
pray God'to forgive you and all the gentle- 
men for your cruelty in galloping with all 
those dogs after one poor little inoffensive 
thing, to hunt it and kill it—kiull it twice, 
indeed ; once with terror, and then over 
again with mangling its poor little body.’’ 

‘‘This is cheerful,’’ said Sir Charles, 
rather ruefully. ‘‘ We cannot all be 
angels, like you. It is a glorious excite- 
ment. There! you are too good for this 
world ; I'll let you off going.”’ 

‘“¢Oh no, dear. I won’t be let off, now 
I know your wish. Only I beg to ride 


Not so tyrannical as that; 


472 


A TERRIBLE 


home as soon as the poor thing runs 
away. You wouldn’t get me out of the 
thick covers if I were a fox. Td run 
round and round, and call on all my ac- 
quaintances to set them running.” 

As she said this her eyes turned toward 
each other in a peculiar way, and she 
looked extremely foxy; but the look 
melted away directly. 

The hounds met, and Lady Bassett, who 
was still the beauty of the county, was 
surrounded by riders at first; but as the 
hounds began to work, and every now 
and then a young hound uttered a note, 
they cantered about, and took up differ- 
ent posts, as experience suggested. 

At last a fox was found at the other 
end of the cover, and away galloped the 
hunters in that direction, all but four 
persons, Lady Bassett, and her groom, 
who kept respectfully aloof, and a lady 
and gentleman who had reined their horses 
up on arising ground about a furlong dis- 
tant. 

Lady Bassett, thus left alone, happened 
to look round, and saw the lady level an 
opera-glass toward her and look through 
it. 

Asaresult of this inspection the lady 
cantered toward her. She was on a 
chestnut gelding of great height and 
bone, and rode him as if they were one, 
so smoothly did she move in concert with 
his easy, magnificent strides. 

When she came near Lady Bassett she 
made a little sweep and drew up beside 
her on the grass. 

There was no mistaking that tall figure 
and commanding face. It was the brave 
lady. Her eyes sparkled; her cheek was 
sightly colored with excitement; she 
looked healthier and handsomer than 
ever, and also more feminine, for a reason 
the sagacious reader may perhaps discern 
if he attends to the dialogue. 

*“So,”’ said she, without bowing or any 
other ceremony, ‘‘that little rascal is 
troubling you again.”’ 

Lady Bassett colored and panted, and 
looked lovingly at her, before she could 
speak. At last she said, ‘‘ Yes; and you 
have come to help us again.”’ 

‘‘ Well, the lawyer said there was no 


TEMPTATION. sf] 


time to lose; so I have brought you the 
anonymous letter.”’ 

‘Oh, thank you, madam, thank you.’’ 

‘* But I’m afraid it will be of no use un- 
less you can prove Mr. Bassett wrote it. 
It is in a disguised hand.’’ 

**But you found him out by means of 
another letter.’’ 

“Yes; but [can’t give you that other 
letter to have it read in a court of law, 
because— Do you see that gentleman 
there ? ’’ 

i i 

‘That is Marsh.”’ 

me Olieis tw. 

‘“Heisafool; but 1 am going to marry 
him. I have been very ill since I saw 
you, and poor Marsh nursed me. Talk of 
women nurses! If ever you are ill in 
earnest, as | was, write to me, and [’ll 
send you Marsh. Oh, I have no words 
to tell you his patience, his forbearance, 
his watchfulness, his tenderness to a sick 
woman. It isnouse—I must marry him; 
and I could have no letter published that 
would give him pain.’’ 

‘“Of course not. Oh, madam, do you 
think | am capable of doing anything 
that would give you pain, or dear Mr. 
Marsh either ?’’ 

““No, no; you are a good woman.”’ 

‘Not half so good as you are.’’ 

“You don’t know what you are say- 
jay age 

‘Ohi ves, 1 dgae 

«Then I say no more; it is rude to 
contradict. Good-by, Lady Bassett.’’ 

“Must you leave me so soon? Will 
you not visit us? May I not know the 
name of so good a friend ?”’ 

‘* Next week I shall be Mrs. Marsh.”’ 

‘““And you will give me the great 
pleasure of having you at my house—you 
and your husband ? ”’ p 

The lady showed some agitation at 
this—an unusual thing for her. She 
faltered : ‘“‘Some day, perhaps, if I make 
him as good a wife as I hope to. What 
a lady you are! Vulgar people are 
ashamed to be grateful; but you are 
a born lady. Good-by, before I make a 
fool of myself; and they are all coming 


this way, by the dog's’ music.”’ 


52 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


‘Won't you kiss me, after bringing | about this mysterious lady. She rode 


me this ?”’ 

o KIss se you rc, 
eyes. 

‘““If you please,’ said Lady Bassett, 
bending toward her, with eyes full of 
gratitude and tenderness. 

Then the other woman took her by the 
shoulders, and plunged her great gray 
orbs into Bella’s. 

They kissed each other. 

At that contact the stranger seemed to 
change her character all in a moment. 
She strained Bella to her bosom and 
kissed her passionately, and sobbed out, 
wildly, ‘‘O God! you are good to sinners. 
This is the happiest hour of my life—it is 
a forerunner. Bless you, sweet dove of 
innocence! You will be none the worse, 
and I am all the better— Ah! Sir 
Charles. Not one word about me to 
him.”’ 

And with these words, uttered with 
sudden energy, she spurred her great 
horse, leaped the ditch, and _ burst 
through the dead hedge into the wood, 
and winded out of sight among the 
trees. 

Sir Charles came up 
“Why, who was that ?”’ 

Bella’s eyes began to rove, as I have 
before described ; but she replied pretty 
promptly, ‘‘The brave lady herself ; she 
brought me the anonymous letter for 
your defense.”’ 

“Why, how came she to know about 
eer. 4 

‘‘She did not tell me that. She was in 
a great hurry. Her fiancé was waiting 
for her.’” 

‘“ Was it necessary to kiss her in the 
hunting-field?’’ said Sir Charles, with 
something very like a frown. 

*1’d kiss the whole field, grooms and 
all, if they did you a great service, as 
that dear lady has,’’ said Bella. The 
words were brave, but the accent 
piteous. 

“You are excited, Bella. You had 
better ride home,’’ said Sir Charles, 
gently enough, but moodily. 

‘‘Thank you, Charles,”’ 
glad to escape further 


and she opened her 


astonished. 


said Bella, 
examination 


home accordingly. There she found Mr. 
Oldfield, and showed him the anonymous 
letter. 

He read it, and said it was a defense, 
but a disagreeable one. ‘‘Suppose he 
says he wrote it, and the facts were 
true? ”’ 

‘But [don’t think he will confess it. 
He is not a gentleman. He is very un- 
truthful. Can we not make this a trap 
to catch him, sir? He has no scruples.’’ 

Oldfield looked at her in some surprise 
at her depth. 

‘We must get hold of his hand- 
writing,’ said he. ‘‘ We must ransack 
the local banks; find his correspond- 
ents.”’ 

‘“‘Leave all that to me,’’ said 
Bassett, in a low voice. 

Mr. Oldfield thought he might as well 
please a beautiful and loving woman, if 
he could; so he gave her something to 
do for her husband. ‘‘ Very well; collect 
all the materials of comparison you can 
—letters, receipts, etc. Meantime I will 
retain the two principal experts in Lon- 
don, and we will submit your materials 
to them the night before the trial.”’ 

Lady Bassett, thus instructed, drove to 
all the banks, but found no clerk ac- 
quainted with Mr. Bassett’s handwrit- 
ing. He did not bank with anybody in 
the county. 

She called on 
thought 
other writings of 
Not a scrap. 


Lady 


several persons she 
likely to possess letters or 
Richard Bassett. 


Then she began to fear. The case 
looked desperate. 
Then she began to think. And she 


thought very hard indeed, especially at 
night. 

In the dead of night she had an idea. 
She got up, and stole from her husband’s 
side, and studied the anonymous letter. 

Next day she sat down with the anony- 
mous letter on her desk, and blushed, and 
trembled, and looked about like some wild 
animal scared. She selected from the 
anonymous letter several words—‘“ char- 
acter, abused, Sir, Charles, Bassett, lady, 
abandoned, friend, whether, ten, slander- 


A TERRIBLE 


er,’’ etc.—and wrote them on a slip of 
paper. Then she locked up the anony- 
mous letter. Then she locked the door. 
Then she sat down toa sheet of paper, 
and, after some more wild and furtive 
glances all around, she gave her whole 
mind to writing a letter. 

And to whom did she write, think 
you ? 

To Richard Bassett. 


CHAPTER XI. 


‘“Mr. BassETtT—I am sure both your- 
self and my husband will suffer in pub- 
lic estimation, unless some friend comes 
between you, and this unhappy lawsuit is 
given up. 

“Do not think me blind nor’ presumpt- 
uous; Sir Charles, when he wrote that 
letter, had reason to believe you had done 
him a deep injury by unfair means. 
Many will share that opinion if this 
cause is tried. You are his cousin, and 
his heir at law. I dread to see an un- 
happy feud inflamed by a public trial. 
js there no personal sacrifice by which 
I can compensate the affront you have re- 
ceived, without compromising Sir Charles 
Bassett’s veracity, who is the soul of 
honor ? 

‘*T am, yours obediently, 
‘BELLA BASSETT.’’ 


She posted this letter, and Richard 
Bassett had no sooner received it than 
he mounted his horse and _ rode _ to 
Wheeler’s with it. 

That worthy’s eyes sparkled. ‘* Cap- 
ital!’’ said he. ‘‘We must draw her 
on, and write an answer that will read 
well in court.’’ 

He concocted an epistle just the op- 
posite of what Richard Bassett, left to 
himself, would have written. Bassett 
copied, and sent it as his own. 


TEMPTATION, 53 

‘ Lapy Bassett—I thank you for writ- 
ing to me at this moment, when I am 
weighed down by slander. Your own 
character stands so high that you would 
not deign to write to me if you believed 


| the abuse that has been lavished on me. 


With you I deplore this family feud. It 
is not of my seeking’; and as for this law- 
suit, it is one in which the plaintitf is 
really the defendant. Sir Charles has 
written a defamatory letter, which has 
closed every house in this county to his 
victim. If, as Il now feel sure, you disap- 
prove the libel, pray persuade him to re- 
tract it. The rest our lawyers can settle. 
‘Yours very respectfully, 
‘¢ RICHARD BASSETT.”’ 


When Lady Bassett read this, she saw 
she had an adroit opponent. Yet she 
wrote again : 


‘¢ Mr. BassETT—There are limits to my 
influence with Sir Charles. I have no 
power to make him say one word against 
his convictions. 

‘* But my lawyer tells me you seek pe- 
cuniary compensation for an affront. I 
offer you, out of my own means, which are 
ample, that which you seek—offer it freely 
and heartily; and I honestly think you 
had better receive it from me than expose 
yourself to the risks and mortifications 
of a public trial. 

‘‘T am, yours obediently, 
‘* BELLA BASSETT.”’ 


‘“‘LADY BASSETT—You have fallen into 
a very natural error. It is true I sue 
Sir Charles Bassett for money ; but that 
is only because the law allows me my 
remedy in no other form. What really 
brings me into court is the defense of my 
injured honor. How do you meet me? 
You say, virtually, ‘Never mind your 
character: here is money.’ Permit me 
to decline it on such terms. 

‘¢ A public insult cannot be cured in 
private. 

‘‘Strong in my innocence, and my 
wrongs, I court what you call the risks 
of a public trial. 

‘Whatever the result, you have played 


54 


the honorable and womanly part of peace- 
maker; and it is unfortunate for your 
husband that your gentle influence is 
limited by his vanity, which perseveres 
in a cruel slander, instead of retracting 
it while there is yet time. 
‘‘T am, madam, yours obediently, 
' « RICHARD BASSETT.”’ 


“Mr. Bassett—I retire from a cor- 
respondence which appears to be use- 
less, and might, if prolonged, draw some 
bitter remark from me, as it has from 
you. 

«« After the trial, which you court and 
I deprecate, you will perhaps review my 
letters with a more friendly eye. 

‘‘T am, yours obediently, 
“ BELLA BASSETT.”’ 


In this fencing-match between a lawyer 
and a lady each gained an advantage. 
The lawyer’s letters, as might have been 
expected, were the best adapted to be 
read toa jury; but the lady, subtler in 
her way, obtained, at a small sacrifice, 
what she wanted, and that without raising 
the slightest suspicion of her true motive 
in the correspondence. 

She announced her success to Mr. Old- 
field; but, in the midst of it, she quaked 
with terror at the thought of what Sir 
Charles would say to her for writing to 
Mr. Bassett at all. 

She now, with the changeableness of 
her sex, hoped and prayed Mr. Bassett 
would admit the anonymous letter, and 
so all her subtlety and pains prove super- 
fluous. 

@uaking secretly, but with a lovely 
face and serene front, she took her place 
at the assizes, before the judge, and got 
aS near him as she could. 

The court was crowded, and many 
ladies present. 

Bassett v. Bassett was called in a loud 
voice; there was a hum of excitement, 
then a silence of expectation, and the 
plaintiff’s counsel rose to address the 
jury. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


CHAPTER XII. 


“May it please your Lordship: Gen- 
tlemen of the Jury—The plaintiff in this 
case is Richard Bassett, Esquire, the 
direct and lineal representative of that 
old and honorable family, whose monu- 
ments are to be seen in several churches 
in this county, and whose estates are the 
largest, I believe, in the county. He 
would have succeeded, as a matter of 
course, to those estates, but for an 
arrangement made only a year before he 
was born, by which, contrary to nature 
and justice, he was denuded of those 
estates, and they passed to the defend- 
ant. The defendant is nowise to blame 
for that piece of injustice ; but he profits 
by it, and it might be expected that his 
good fortune would soften his heart 
toward his unfortunate relative. I say 
that if uncommon tenderness might be 
expected to be shown by anybody to this 
deserving and unfortunate gentleman, it 
would be by Sir Charles Bassett, who 
enjoys his cousin’s ancestra: estates, and 
ean so well appreciate what that cousin 
has lost by no fault of his own.’’ 

“ Hear! hear !”’ | 

«Silence in the court !”’ 

The Judge.—i must request that there 
may be no manifestation of feeling. 

Counsel.—I will endeavor to provoke 
none, my lord. Itis avery simple case, 
and I shall not occupy you long. Well, 
gentlemen, Mr. Bassett is a poor man, 
by no fault of his; but if he is poor, he is 
proud and honorable. He has met the 
frowns of fortune like a gentleman—like 
aman. He has not solicited government 
fora place. He has not whined nor la- 
mented.. He has dignified unmerited 
poverty by prudence and _ self-denial ; 
and, unable to forget that he is a Bas- 
sett, he has put by a little money every 
year, and bought a small estate or two, 
and had even applied to the Lord-Lieu- 
tenant to make him a justice of the peace, 
when a most severe and unexpected blow 
fell upon him.. Among those large pro- 
prietors who respected him in spite of his 
humbler circumstances was Mr. Hard- 
wicke, one of the county members. Well, 


A TERRIBLE 


gentlemen, on the 21st of last May Mr. 
Bassett received a letter from Mr. Hard- 
wicke inclosing one purporting to be from 
Sir Charles Bassett— 

The Judge.—Does Sir Charles Bassett 
admit the letter ? 

Defendant’s Counsel (after a word 
with Oldfield).—Yes, my lord. 

Plaintiff s Counsel.—A letter admitted 
to be written by Sir Charles Bassett. 
That letter shall be read to you. 

The letter was then read. 

The counsel resumed : ‘‘ Conceive, if you 
can, the effect of this blow, just as my 
unhappy and most deserving client was 
rising a little in the world. I shall prove 
that it excluded him from Mr. Hard- 
wicke’s house, and other houses too. He 
is a man of too much importance to risk 
affronts. He has never entered the door 
of any gentleman in this county since 
his powerful relative published this cruel 
libel. He has drawn his Spartan cloak 
around him, and he awaits your verdict 
to resume that place among you which is 
due to him in every way—due to him as 
the heir in direct line to the wealth, and, 
above all, to the honor of the Bassetts : 
due to him as Sir Charles Bassett’s heir 
at law; and due to him on account of the 
decency and fortitude with which he has 
borne adversity, and with which he now 
repels foul-mouthed slander.”’ 

‘‘Hear ! hear !”’ 

“‘ Silence in the court ! ”’ 

‘“‘T have done, gentlemen, for the 
present. Indeed, eloquence, even if I 
possessed it, would be superfiuous; the 
facts speak for themselves.—Call James 
Hardwicke, Esq.”’ 

Mr. Hardwicke proved the receipt of 
the letter from Sir Charles, and that he 
had sent it to Mr. Bassett; and that Mr. 
Bassett had not entered his house since 
then, nor had he invited him. 

Mr. Bassett was then called, and, being 
duly trained by Wheeler, abstained from 
all heat, and wore an air of dignified de- 
jection. His counsel examined him, and 
his replies bore out the opening state- 
ment. Everybody thought him sure of a 
verdict. 

He was then cross-examined. Defend- 


TEMPTATION. 55 
ant’s counsel pressed him about his un- 
fair way of shooting. The judge inter- 
fered, and said that was trifling. If there 
was no substantial defense, why not settle 
the matter ? 

‘There is a defense, my lord.”’ 

‘* Then it is time you disclosed it.”’ 

““Very well, my lord. Mr. Bassett, 
did you ever write an anonymous let- 
ter?) 

‘* Not that I remember.’’ 

“Oh, that appears to youa trifle. It 
is not so considered.”’ , 

The Judge.—Be more particular in your 
question. 

**] will, my lord.—Did you ever write 
an anonymous letter, to make mischief 
between Sir Charles and Lady Bas- 
sett ? ”’ 

‘‘Never,’’ said the witness; but he 
turned pale. 

‘*Do you mean to say you did not write 
this letter to Miss Bruce? Look at the 
letter, Mr. Bassett, before you reply.” 

Bassett cast one swift glance of agony 
at Wheeler; then braced himself like 
iron. He examined the letter attentive- 
ly, turned it over, lived an age, and said 
it was not his writing. 

‘‘ Do you swear that ?”’ 

“ Certainly.” 

Defendant’s Counsel.—I shall ask your 
lordship to take down that reply. If per- 
sisted in, my client will indict the witness 
for perjury. 

Plaintiffs Counsel.—Don’t threaten 
the witness as well as insult him, please. 

The Judge.—He is an educated man, 
and knows the duty he owes to God and 
the defendant.—Take time, Mr. Bassett, 
and recollect. Did you write that let- 
ter ? ”’ 

““ No, my lord.’’ 

Counsel waited for the judge to note 
the reply, then proceeded. 

‘“You have lately corresponded with 
Lady Bassett, I think ?”’ 

“Yes. Her ladyship opened a corre- 
spondence with me.’’ 

“It isa lie!’’ roared Sir Charles Bas- 
sett from the door of the grand jury 
room. 

‘* Silence in the court ! ”’ 


56 WORKS OF CHARLES 


The Judge.—Who made that unseemly | 


remark ? 

Sir Charles.—I did, my lord. 
never corresponded with the cur. 

The Plaintiff—Ilt is only one insult 
more, gentlemen, and as false as the rest. 
Permit me, my lord. My own counsel 
would never have put the question. I 
would not, for the world, give Lady Bas- 
sett pain ; but Sir Charles and his counsel 
have extorted the truth from me. Her 
ladyship did open a correspondence with 
me, and a friendly one. 

The Plaintiff's Counsel.—Will your 
lordship ask whether that was after the 
defendant had written the libel ? 

The question was put; and answered in 
the affirmative. 

Lady Bassett hid her face in her hands. 
Sir Charles saw the movement, and 
groaned aloud. 

The Judge.—l beg the case may not be 
encumbered with irrelevant matter. 

Counsel replied that the correspond- 
ence would be made evidence in the case. 
(To the witness.)— You wrote this letter 
to Lady Bassett ? ” 

Bony @S..” 

«¢ And every word in it?” 

«« And every word in it,’’ faltered Bas- 
sett, now ashy pale, for he began to see 
the trap. 

“Then you wrote this word ‘ charac- 
ter,’ and this word ‘injured,’ and this 
word—”’ 

The Judge (peevishly).—He tells you 
he wrote every word in those letters to 
Lady Bassett. What more would you 
have? 

Counsel.—lf your lordship will be good 
enough to examine the correspondence, 
and compare those words in it I have 
underlined with the same words in the 
anonymous letter, you will perhaps find 
I know my business better than you seem 
to think. (The counsel who ventured on 
this remonstrance was a sergeant.) 

‘Brother Eitherside,”’ said the judge, 
with a charming manner, ‘‘ you Satisfied 
me of that, to my cost, long ago, when- 
ever I had you against me in a case. 
Please hand me the letters.”’ 

While the judge was making a keen 


My wife 


READE. 


comparison, counsel continued the cross- 
examination. 

‘* You are aware that this letter caused 
a separation between Sir Charles Bassett 
and the lady he was engaged to?”’ 

‘T know nothing about it.’’ 

““Indeed! Well. were you acquainted 
with the Miss Somerset mentioned in this 
letter ? ”’ , 

‘« Slightly.”’ 

‘* You have been at her house ? ”’ 

‘¢ Once or twice.”’ 

“ Which? Twice is double as often as 
once, you know.”’ 

«* 'T'wice.”’ 

““No more? ”’ 

‘Not that I recollect.”’ 

“You wrote to her? ”’ 

‘7 may have.’’ 

‘¢ Did you, or did you not? ”’ 

cle Oia 

‘What was the purport of that let- 
ter? ”’ 

“T can’t recollect at this distance of 
time.”’ 

‘*On your oath, sir, did you not write 
urging her to co-operate with you to keep 
Sir Charles Bassett from marrying his 
affianced, Miss Bella Bruce. to whom 
that anonymous letter was written with 
the same object? ”’ 

The perspiration now rolled in visible 
drops down the tortured liar’s face. Yet 
still, by a gigantic effort, he stood firm, 
and even planted a blow. 

‘*] did not write the anonymous letter. 
But I believe I told Miss Somerset I loved 
Miss Bruce, and that her lover was rob- 
bing me of mine, as he had robbed me of 
everything else.”’ 

‘And that was all you said—on your 
oath ? ”’ 

«All I can recollect.’’ With this the 
strong man, cowed, terrified, expecting 
his letter to Somerset to be produced, and 
so the iron chain of evidence completed, 
gasped out, ‘‘ Man, you tear open all my 
wounds at once!” and with this burst 
out sobbing, and lamenting aloud that 
he had ever been born. 

Counsel waited calmly till he should be 
in a condition to receive another dose. 

‘*Oh, will nobody stop this cruel trial ? ”’ 


A TERRIBLE 


said Lady Bassett, with the tears trick- 
ling down her face. 

The judge heard this remark without 
seeming to do so. 

He said to defendant’s counsel, ‘* What- 
ever the truth may be, you have proved 
enough to show Sir Charles Bassett might 
well have an honest conviction that 
Mr. Bassett had done a dastardly act. 
Whether a jury would ever agree on 
a question of handwriting must always 
be doubtful. Looking at the relationship 
of the parties, is it advisable to carry this 
matter further? If I might advise the 
gentlemen, they would each consent to 
withdraw a juror.”’ 

Upon this suggestion the counsel for 
both parties put their heads together in 
animated whispers ; and during this the 
judge made a remark to the jury, in- 
tended for the public: ‘‘Since Lady Bas- 
sett’s name has been drawn into this, I 
must say that I have read her letters to 
Mr. Bassett, and they are such as she 
could write without in the least com- 
promising her husband. Indeed, now the 
defense is disclosed, they appear to me to 
be wise and kindly letters, such as only 
a good wife, a high-bred lady, and a true 
Christian could write in so delicate a 
matter.”’ 

Plaintiffs Counsel.—My lord, we are 
agreed to withdraw a juror. 

Defendant’s Counsel.—Out of respect 
for your lordship’s advice, and not from 
any doubt of the result on our part. 

The Crier.—W Ack v. HALIBURTON! 

And so the car of justice rolled on till 
it came to Wheeler v. Bassett. 

This case was soon disposed of. 

Sir Charles Bassett-was dignified and 
calm in the witness-box, and treated the 
whole matter with high-bred noncha- 
lance, aS one unworthy of the attention 
the Court was good enough to bestow on 
it. The judge disapproved the assault, 
but said the plaintiff had drawn it on 
himself by unprofessional conduct, and 
by threatening a gentleman in his own 
house. Verdict for the plaintiff — 40s. 
The judge refused to certify for costs. 

Lady Bassett, her throat parched with 
excitement, drove home, and awaited her 


TEMPTATION. 57 


husband’s return with no little anxiety. 
As soon as she heard him in his dressing- 
room she glided in and went down on her 
knees to him. ‘‘ Pray, pray don’t scold 
me; I couldn’t bear you to be defeated, 
Charles.’’ 

Sir Charles raised her, but did not kiss 
er. 

‘“Yourvthink. only of me,?? said Jhe, 
rather sadly. ‘It is a sorry victory, 
too dearly bought.” 

Then she began to cry. 

Sir Charles begged her not to cry ; but 
still he did not kiss her, nor conceal his 
mortification : he hardly spoke to her for 
several days. 

She accepted her disgrace pensively 
and patiently. She thought it all over, 
and felt her husband was right, and 
loved her ike aman. But she thought, 
also, that she was not very wrong to love 
him in her way. Wrong or not, she felt 
she could not sit idle and see his enemy 
defeat him. 

The coolness died away by degrees, with 
so much humility on one side and so much 
love on both: but the subject was inter- 
dicted forever. 

A week after the trial Lady Bassett 
wrote to Mrs. Marsh, under cover to Mr. 
Oldfield, and told her how the trial had 
gone, and, with many expressions of 
gratitude, invited her and her husband 
to Huntercombe Hall. She told Sir 
Charles what she had done, and he wore 
a very strange look. ‘‘ Might I suggest 
that we have them alone? ’”’ saidhe dryly. 

‘‘By all means,’’ said Lady Bassett. 
““T don’t want to share my paragon 
with anybody.”’ 

In due course a reply came; Mr. and 
Mrs. Marsh would avail themselves some 
day of Lady Bassett’s kindness : at pres- 
ent they were going abroad. The letter 
was written by a man’s hand. 

_ About this time Oldfield sent Sir Charles 
Miss Somerset’s deed, canceled, and told 
him she had married a man of fortune, 
who was devoted to her, and preferred to 
take her without any dowry. 


Bassett and Wheeler went home, crest- 
fallen, and dined together. They dis- 


58 


cussed the two trials, and each blamed 
the other. They quarreled and parted : 
and Wheeler sent in an enormous bill, 
extending over five years. EHighty-five 
items began thus: ‘“ Attending you at 
your house for several hours, on which 
occasion you asked my advice as to whe- 
ther—”’ etc. 

Now as a great many of these attend- 
ances had been really to shoot game and 
dine on rabbits at Bassett’s expense, he 
thought it hard the conversation should 
be charged and the rabbits not. 

Disgusted with his defeat, and resolved 
to evade this bill, he discharged his ser- 
vant, and put a retired soldier into his 
house, armed him with a blunderbuss, 
and ordered him to keep all doors closed, 
and present the weapon aforesaid at all 
rate collectors, tax collectors, debt col- 
lectors, and applicants for money to build 
churches or convert the heathen; but 
not to fire at anybody except his friend 
Wheeler, nor at him unless he should try 
to shove a writ in at some chink of the 
building. 

This done, he went on his travels, third- 
class, with his eyes always open, and his 
heart full of bitterness. 

Nothing happened to Richard Bassett 
on his travels that I need relate until one 
evening when he alighted at a small com- 
mercial inn in the city of York, and there 
met a person whose influence on the events 
I am about to relate seems at this mo- 
ment incredible to me, though it is simple 
fact. 

He found the commercial room empty, 
and rang the bell. In came the waiter, 
a strapping girl, with coal-black eyes and 
brows to match, and a brown skin, but 
glowing cheeks. 

They both started at sight of each 
other. It was Polly Somerset. 

‘Why, Polly! How d’ye do? How 
do you come here?”’ : 

“‘ It’s along of you I’m here, youn 
man,’’ said Polly, and began to whimper. 
She told him her sister had found out 
from the page she had been colloguing 
with him, and had never treated her 
like a sister after that. ‘‘ And when she 
married a gentleman she wouldn’t have 


Se  ——————— 
pu 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


me aside her for all I could say, but she 
did pack me off into service, and here I 
ber” 

The girl was handsome, and had a lik- 
ing for him. Bassett was idle, and time 
hung heavy on his hands: he stayed at the 
inn a fortnight, more for Polly’s company 
than anything: and at last offered to put 
her into a vacant cottage on his own lit- 
tle estate of Highmore. But the girl 
was shrewd, and had seen a great deal 
of life this last three years; she liked 
Richard in her way, but she saw he was 
all self, and she would not trust him. 
‘““Nay,’’ said she, “ [’ll not break with 
Rhoda for any young man in Britain. If 
I leave service she will never own me at 
all: she is as hard as iron.”’ 

‘“ Well, but you might come and take 
service near me, and then we could often 
get a word together.’’ 

“Oh, ’'m agreeable to that: you find 
me a good place. I like an inn best; one 
sees fresh faces.’’ 

Bassett promised to manage that for 
her. On reaching home he found a con- 
ciliatory letter from Wheeler, coupled 
with his permission to tax the bill ac- 
cording to his own notion of justice. 
This and other letters were in an out- 
house; the old soldier had not permitted 
them to penetrate the fortress. He had 
entered into the spirit of his instructions, 
and to him a letter was a probable hand- 
grenade. 

Bassett sent for Wheeler; the bill was 
reduced, and a small payment made; the 
rest postponed till better times. Wheel- 
er was then consulted about Polly, and 
he told his client the landlady of the 
‘*Lamb’’ wanted'a good active waitress ; 
he thought he could arrange that little 
affair. 

In due course, thanks to this artist, 
Mary Wells, hitherto known as Polly . 
Somerset, landed with her boxes at the 
‘Lamb ’’; and with her quick foot, her 
black eyes, and ready tongue soon added 
to the popularity of the inn. Richard 
Bassett, Esq., for one, used to sup there 
now and then with his friend Wheeler, 
and even sleep there after supper. 

By-and-by the vicar of Huntercombe 


A TERRIBLE 


wanted a servant, and offered to engage 
Mary Wells. 

She thought twice about that. She 
could neither write nor read, and there- 
fore was dreadfully dull without com- 
pany; the bustle of an inn, and people 
coming and going, amused her. How- 
ever, it was a temptation to be near 
Richard Bassett; so she accepted at 
last. Unable to write, she could not 
consult him; and she made sure he 
would be delighted. 

But when she got into the village the 
prudent Mr. Bassett drew in his horns, 
and avoided her. She was mortified and 
very angry. She revenged herself on 
her employer; broke double her wages. 
The vicar had never been able to convert 
a smasher; so he parted with her very 
readily to Lady Bassett, with a hint that 
she was rather unfortunate in glass and 
china. 

In that large house her spirits rose, 
and, having a hearty manner and a 
clapper tongue, she became a general 
favorite. 

One day she met Mr. Bassett in the 
village, and he seemed delighted at the 
sight of her, and begged her to meet him 
that night ata certain place where Sir 
Charles’s garden was divided from his 
own by aha-ha. It was a very secluded 
spot, shut out from view, even in day- 
light, by the trees and shrubs and the 
winding nature of the walk that led to 
it; yet it was scarcely a hundred yards 
from Huntercombe Hall. 

Mary Wells came to the tryst, but in 
no amorous mood. She came merely to 
tell Mr. Bassett her mind, viz., that he 
was a Shabby fellow, and she had had her 
cry, and didn’t care a straw for him now. 
And she did tell him so, ina loud voice, 
and with a flushed:cheek. 

But he set to work, humbly and pa- 
tiently, to pacify her; he represented 
that, ina small house like the vicarage, 
every thing is known; he should have 
ruined her character if he had not held 
aloof. ‘*‘ But it is different now,’ said 
he. ‘*You can run out of Huntercombe 
House, and meet me here, and nobody be 
any the wiser.”’ 


TEMPTATION. 59 

“Not I,”’ said Mary Wells, with a toss. 
‘«The worse thing a girl can do is to keep 
company with a gentleman. She must. 
meet him in holes and corners, and be 
flung off, like an old glove, when she has. 
served his turn.”’ 

‘That will never happen to you, Polly - 
dear. We must be prudent for the pres- 
ent; but I shall be more my own mas- 
ter some day, and then you will see how 
Il love you.”’ 

‘‘Seeing is believing,’’ said the girl, 
sullenly. ‘‘ You be too fond of yourself 
to love the likes o’ me.’’ 

Such was the warning her natural 
shrewdness gave her. But perseverance 
undermind it. Bassett so often threw 
out hints of what he would do some 
day, mixed with warm protestations of 
love, that she began almost to hope he 
would marry her. She really liked him ; 
his fine figure and his color pleased her 
eye, and he had a plausible tongue to 
boot. 

As for him, her rustic beauty and 
health pleased his senses; but, for his 
heart, she had little place in that. 
What he courted her for just now was 
to keep him informed of all that passed 
in Huntercombe Hall. His morbid soul 
hung about that place, and he listened > 
greedily to Mary Wells’s gossip. He 
had counted on her volubility; it did 
not disappoint him. She never met him 
without a budget, one-half of it lies or 
exaggerations. She was a born liar. 
One night she came in high spirits, and 
greeted him‘thus: ‘‘ What d’ye think ? 
I’m riz! Mrs. Eden, that dresses my 
lady’s hair, she took ill yesterday, and 
I told the housekeeper I was used to 
dress hair, and she told my lady. If 
you didn’t please our Rhoda at that, 
‘twas aS much as your life was worth. 
You mustn’t be thinking of your young 


bf 


man with her hair in your hand, or 
she’d rouse you with a good crack on 
the crown with a _ hair-brush. So I 


dressed my lady’s hair, and handled it 
like old chaney; by the same token, she 
is so pleased with me you can’t think. 
She is a real lady; not like our Rhoda. 
Speaks as civil to me as if I was one of. 


60 WORKS OF 


her own sort; and, says she, ‘I should 
like to have you about me, if I might.’ 
I had it on my tongue to tell her she 
was mistress; but I was a little skeared 
at her at first, you know. But she will 
have me about her; I see it in her eye.”’ 

Bassett was delighted at this news, 
but he did not speak his mind all at 
once; the time was not come. He let 
the gypsy rattle on, and bided his time. 
He flattered her, and said he envied 
Lady Bassett to have such a beautiful 
girl about her. ‘Ill let my hair grow,” 
said he. 

SrAwe nds Ssaldeshe, ‘andzthen {1 ll 
pull it for you.’’ 

This challenge ‘ended in a little 
struggle for a kiss, the sincerity of 
which was doubtful. Polly resisted 
vigorously, to be sure, but briefly, and, 
having given in, returned it. 

One day she told him Sir Charles had 
met her plump, and had given a great 
start. 

This made Bassett very uneasy. 
‘‘Confound it, he will turn you away. 
He will say, ‘This girl knows too 
much,.o77 

‘How simple -you be!’’ said the girl. 
“D’ye think I let him know? Says 
he, ‘I think I have seen you before.’ 
‘Yes, sir,’ says I, ‘I was housemaid 
here before my lady had me to dress 
her.’ ‘No,’ says he, ‘I mean in Lon- 
don—in Mayfair, you know.’ I declare 
you might ha* knocked me down wi’ a 
feather. So I looks in his face, as cool 
as marble, and I said, ‘ No, sir; I never 
had the luck to see London, sir,’ says I. 
‘All the better for you,’ says he; and 
he swallowed it like spring water, as 
sister Rhoda used to say when she told 
one and they believed it.’’ 

““ You are a clever girl,’’ said Bassett. 
‘“‘He would have turned you out of the 
house if he had known who you were.”’ 

She disappointed him in one thing; 
she was bad at answering questions. 
Morally she was not quite so great an 
‘egotist as himself, but intellectually a 
greater. Her volubility was all ego- 
tism. She could scarcely say ten 
words, except about herself. So, when 


CHARLES 


READE. 


Bassett questioned her about Sir Charles 
and Lady Bassett, she said ‘‘ Yes,’’ or 
“No,” or ‘‘I don’t know,” and was off 
at a tangent to her own sayings and 
doings. 

Bassett, however, by great patience 
and tact, extracted from her at last that 
Sir Charles and Lady Bassett were both 
sore at not having children, and that 
Lady Bassett bore the blame. 

“That is a good joke,’’ said he. ‘‘The 
smoke-dried rake! Polly, you might do 
mea good turn. You have got her ear ; 
open her eyes for me. What might not 
happen ?’’ His eyes shone fiendishly. 

The young woman shook her head. 
‘‘“Me meddle between man and wife! 
I’m too fond of my place.”’ 

“Ah, you don’t love me as I love you. 
You think only of yourself.’’ 

‘And what do you think of ? Do you 
love me well enough to find me a better 
place, if you get me turned out of Hun- 
tercombe Hall ? ’’ 

“¢ Yes, I will; a much better.”’ 

‘That is a bargain.”’ 

Mary Wells was silly in some thing's, 
but she was very cunning, too; and she 
knew Richard Bassett’s hobby. She told 
him to mind himself, as well as Sir Charles, 
or perhaps he would die a bachelor, and 
so his flesh and blood would never in- 
herit Huntercombe. This remark en- 
tered his mind. The trial, though appar- 
ently a drawn battle, had been fatal to 
him—he was cut; he dared not pay his 
addresses to any lady in the county, and 
he often felt very lonely now. So every- 
thing combined to draw him toward Mary 
Wells—her swarthy beauty, which shone 
out at church like a black diamond among 
the other women; his own loneliness ; 
and the pleasure these stolen meetings 
gave him. Custom itself is pleasant, and 
the company of this handsome chatter- 
box became a habit, and an agreeable 
one. The young woman herself employed 
a woman's arts; she was cold and loving 
by turns, till at last he gave her what she 
was working for, a downright promise of 
marriage. She pretended not to believe 
him, and so led him further; he swore he 
would marry her. 


a 


A THRRIBLE 


He made one stipulation, however. 
She really must learn to read and write 
first. 

When he had sworn this Mary became 
more uniformly affectionate; and as wo- 
men who have been in service learn great 
self-government, and can generally please 
SO long as it serves their turn, she made 
herself so agreeable to him that he began 
really to have a downright liking for her 
—a liking bounded, of course, by his in- 
curable selfishness ; but as for his hobby, 
that was on her side. 

Now learning to read and write was 
wormwood to Mary Wells; but the prize 
was So ereat ; she knew all about the 
Huntercombe estates, partly from her 
sister, partly from Bassett himself. (He 
must tell his wrongs even to this girl.) 
So she resolved to pursue matrimony, 
even on the severe condition of becoming 
a scholar. She set about it as follows: 
One day that she was doing Lady Bas- 
sett’s hair she sighed several times. This 
was to attract the lady’s attention, and 
it succeeded. 

‘‘TIs there anything the matter, Mary ?”’ 

‘“No, my lady.” 

‘‘T think there is.’’ 

«‘ Well, my lady, lam ina little trouble; 
but it is my own people’s fault for not 
sending of me to school. I might be 
married to-morrow if I could only read 
and write.’’ 

** And can you not?” 

“No, my lady.’’ 

“Dear me! I thought everybody could 
read and write nowadays.” 

‘*La, no, my lady! not half of them in 
our village.” 

‘‘Your parents are much to blame, my 
poor girl. Well, but it is not too late. 
Now I think of it, there is an adult school 
in the village. Shall I arrange for you to 
go to it?”’ | 

“Thank you, my lady. 

eWVell 2? 

“All my fellow-servants would have a 
laugh against me.”’ 

“The person you are engaged to, will 
he not instruct you? ”’ 

“Oh, he have no time to teach me. 
Besides, I don’t want him to know, either. 


But then" 


TEMPTATION. 61 


But I won’t be his wife to shame him.’’ 
(Another sigh.) 

‘“Mary,’’ said Lady Bassett, in the in- 
nocence of her heart, ‘‘ you shall not be 
mortified, and you shall not lose a good 
marriage. I will try and teach you my- 
self.”’ 

Mary was profuse in thanks. Lady 
Bassett received them rather coldly. 
She gave her a few minutes’ instruction 
in her dressing-room every day; and 
Mary, who could not have done any- 
thing intellectual for half an hour at a 
stretch, gave her whole mind for those 
few minutes. She was quick, and learned 
very fast. In two months she could read 


_a great deal more than she could under- 


stand, and could write slowly but very 
clearly. 

Now by this time Lady Bassett had 
become so interested in her pupil that she 
made her read letters and newspapers to 
her at those parts of the toilet when her 
services were not required. 

Mary Wells, though a great chatter- 
box, was the closest girl in England. 
Limpet never stuck to a rock as she 
could stick to a lie. She never said one 
word to Bassett about Lady Bassett’s 
lessons. She kept strict silence till she 
could write a letter, and then she sent him 
a line to say she had learned to write for 
love of him, and she hoped he would keep 
his promise. 

Bassett’s vanity was flattered by this. 
But, on reflection, he suspected it was a 
falsehood. He asked her suddenly, at 
their next meeting, who had written that 
note for her. 

‘* You shall see me write the fellow to 
it when you like,”’ was the reply. 

Bassett resolved to submit the matter 
to that test some day. At present, how- 
ever, he took her word for it, and asked 
her who had taught her. 

‘‘T had to teach myself. Nobody cares 
enough for me to teach me. Well, I’ll 
forgive you if you will write mea nice let- 
ter for mine.”’ 

‘What! when we can meet here and 
say everything ? ”’ 

‘No matter; I have written to you, 
and you might write to me. They all get 


62 WORKS 
letters, except me; and the jades hold ’em 
up to me: they see I never getone. When 
you are out, post me a letter now and then. 
It will only cost you a penny. I’m sure I 
don’t ask you for much.”’ 

Bassett humored her in this, and in one 
of his letters called her his wife that was 
to be. 

This pleased her so much that the next 
time they met she hung round his neck 
with a good deal of feminine grace. 

Richard Bassett was a man who now 
lived in the future. Everybody in the 
county believed he had written that 
anonymous letter, and he had no hope 
of shining by his own light. It was bit- 
ter to resign his personal hopes; but he 
did, and sullenly resolved to be obscure 
himself, but the father of the future heirs 
of Huntercombe. He would marry Mary 
Wells, and lay the, blame of the match 
upon Sir Charles, who had blackened him 
in the county, and put it out of his power 
to win a lady’s hand. 

He told Wheeler he was determined to 
marry; but he had not the courage to tell 
him all at once what a wife he had 
selected. 

The consequence of this half confession 
was that Wheeler went to work to find 
him a girl with money, and not under 
county influence. 

One of Wheeler’s clients was a retired 
citizen, living in a pretty villa near the 
market town. Mr. Wright employed him 
in little matters, and found him active and 
attentive. There was a Miss Wright, a 
meek little girl, palish. on whom her 
father doted. Wheeler talked to this 
girl of his friend Bassett, his virtues and 
his wrongs, and interested the young lady 
inhim. Thisdone, he brought him tothe 
house, and the girl, being slight and deli- 
cate, gazed with gentle but undisguised 
admiration on Bassett’s torso. Wheeler 
had told Richard Miss Wright was to 
have seven thousand pounds on her wed- 
ding-day, and that excited a correspond- 
ing admiration in the athletic gentleman. 

After that Bassett often called by him- 
self, and the father encouraged the inti- 
macy. He was old, and wished to see his 
daughter married before he left her; and 


eee A 


OF CHARLES READE. 


this seemed an eligible match, though not 
a brilliant one; a bit of land and a good ~ 
name on one side, a smart bit of money 
on the other. The thing went on wheels. 
Richard Bassett was engaged to Jane 
Wright almost before he was aware. 

Now he felt uneasy about Mary Wells, 
very uneasy ; but it was only the uneasi- 
ness of selfishness. 

He began to try and prepare; he af- 
fected business visits to distant places, 
etc., In order to break off by degrees. 
By this means their meetings were com- 
paratively few. When they did meet. 
(which was now generally by written 
appointment), he tried to prepare by 
telling her he had encountered losses, 
and feared that to marry her would be a 


-bad job for her as well as for him, es- 


pecially if she should have children. 

Mary replied she had been used to 
work, and would rather work for a hus- 
band than any other master. 

On another occasion she asked him 
quietly whether a gentleman ever broke 
his oath. 

‘* Never,’’ said Richard. 

In short, she gave him no opening. 
She would not quarrel. She adhered to 
him as she had never adhered to any- 
thing but a lie before. 

Then he gave up all hope of smoothing 
the matter. He coolly cut her; never 
came to the trysting-place; did not an- 
swer her letters; and, being a reckless 
egotist, married Jane Wright all in a 
hurry, by special license. 

He sent forward to the clerk of Hunter- 
combe church, and engaged the ringers 
to ring the church-bells from six o’clock 
till sundown. This was for Sir Charles’s 
ears. 

It was a balmy evening in May. Lady 
Bassett was commencing her toilet in an 
indolent way, with Mary Wells in attend- 
ance, when the church-bells of Hunter- 
combe struck up a merry peal. 

“Ah!” said Lady Bassett ; ‘‘ what is 
that for? Do you know, Mary? ”’ 

‘“‘No, my lady. Shall Iask?”’ 

‘““No; I dare say it is a village wed- 
ding.’’ 

‘“No, my lady, there’s nobody been 


A TERRIBLE 


married here this six weeks. Our 
kitchen-maid and the baker was the 
last, you know. [ll send and know 
what it is for.”’ 

Mary went out and dispatched the first 
house-maid she caught for intelligence. 
The girl ran into the stable to her sweet- 
heart, and he told her directly. 

Meantime Lady Bassett moralized upon 
church-bells. 

«“They are always sad—saddest when 
they seem to be merriest. Poor things! 
they are trying hard to be merry now; 
but they sound very sad to me—sadder 
than usual, somehow.”’ 


The girl knocked at the door. Mary 
half opened it, and the news shot in— 
«Tis for Squire Bassett ; he is bringing 
of his bride home to Highmore to-day.’’ 

‘Mr. Bassett—married—that is sud- 
den. Who could he find to marry him ? ”’ 

There was no reply. The house-maid 
had fiown off to circulate the news, and 
Mary Wells was supporting herself by 
clutching the door, sick with the sudden 
blow. 

Close as she was, her distress could not 
have escaped another woman’s eye, but 
Lady Bassett never looked at her. After 
the first surprise she had gone into a 
reverie, and was conjuring up the future 
to the sound of those church-bells. She 
requested Mary to go and tell Sir Charles ; 
but she did not lift her head, even to give 
this order. 

Mary crept away, and knocked at Sir 
Charles’s dressing-room. 

«“ Come in,”’ said Sir Charles, thinking, 
of course, it was his valet. 

Mary Wells just opened the door and 
held itajar. ‘‘ My lady bids me tell you, 
sir, the bells are ringing for Mr. Bassett ; 
he’s married, and brings her home to- 
night.’’ 

A dead silence marked the effect of 
this announcement on Sir Charles. Mary 
Wells waited. 


‘‘May Heaven’s curse light on that 
marriage, and no child of theirs ever 
take my place in this house! ”’ 

— * A-a-men!’’ said Mary Wells. 


TEMPTATION. 63 


‘Thank you, sir!’’ said Sir Charles. 
He took her voice for a man’s, so deep 
and guttural was her ‘‘ A-a-men”’ with 
concentrated passion. 

She closed the door and crept back to 
her mistress. 

Lady Bassett was seated at her glass, 
with her hair down and her shoulders 
bare. Mary clinched her teeth, and set 
about her usual work; but very soon 
Lady Bassett gave a start, and stared 
into the glass. ‘‘ Mary !’’ said _ she, 
‘‘what 7s the matter? You look ghast- 
ly, and vour hands are as cold as ice. 
Are you faint ? ”’ 

Nov’ 

‘Then you are ill; very ill.’’ 

‘*T have taken a chill,’’? said Mary, dog- 
gedly. 

“Go instantly to the still-room maid, 
and get a large glass of spirits and hot 
water—quite hot.”’ 

Mary, who wanted to be out of the 
room, fastened her mistress’s back hair 
with dogged patience, and then moved 
toward the door. 

‘Mary,’ said Lady Bassett, in a half- 
apologetic tone. 

“« My lady.’’ 

‘*] should like to hear what the bride 
is like.’’ 

‘*T’ll know that to-night,’’ said Mary, 
grinding her teeth. 

‘‘T shall not require you again till bed- 
time.’ 

Mary left the room, and went, not to 
the still-room, but to her own garret, 
and there she gave way. She flung her- 
self, with a wild cry, upon her little bed, 
and clutched her own hair and the bed- 
clothes, and writhed all about the bed 
like a wild-cat wounded. 

In this anguish she passed an hour she 
never forgot nor forgave. She got up at 
last, and started at her own image in the 
glass. Hair like a savage’s, cheek pale, 
eyes blood-shot. 

She smoothed her hair, washed her 
face, and prepared to go downstairs ; 
but now she was seized with a faintness, 
and had to sit down and moan. She got 
the better of that, and went to the still- 
room, and got some spirits; but she 


64 WORKS OF 
drank them neat, gulped them down like 
water. They sent the devil into her 
black eye, but no color into her pale 
cheek. She had a little scarlet shaw] ; 
she put it over her head, and went into 


the village. She found it astir with 
expectation. 
Mr. Bassett’s house stood near the 


highway, but the entrance to the prem- 
ises was private, and through a long 
white gate. 

By this gate was a heap of stones, and 
Mary Wells got on that heap and waited. 

When she had been there about half an 
hour, Richard Bassett drove up in a hired 
carriage, with his pale little wife beside 
him. At his own gate his eye encoun- 
tered Mary Wells, and he started. She 
stood above him, with her arms folded 
grandly ; her cheek, so swarthy and 
ruddy, was now pale, and her black eyes 
elittered like basilisks at him and _ his 
bride. The whole woman seemed lifted 
out of her low condition, and dignified by 
wrong. 

He had to sustain her look for a few 
seconds, while the gate was being opened, 
and it seemed an age. He felt his first 
pang of remorse when he saw that 
swarthy, ruddy cheek so pale. Then 
came admiration of her beauty, and dis- 
gust at the woman for whom he had jilt- 
ed her; and that gave way to fear: the 
hater looked into those glittering eyes, 
and saw he had roused a hate as unre- 
lenting as his own. 


UAT UH a ou LLY 


For the first few days Richard Bassett 
expected some annoyance from Mary 
Wells ; but none came, and he began to 
flatter himself she was too fond of him 
to give him pain. 

This impression was shaken about ten 
days after the little scene I have de- 


CHARLES READE. 


scribed. He received a short note from 
her, as follows: 


‘¢StR—You must meet me to-night, at 
the same place, eight o’clock. If you do 
not come it will be the worse for you. 

ce M W ee) 


Richard Bassett’s inclination was to 
treat this summons with contempt; but 
he thought it would be wiser to go and 
see Whether the girl had any hostile in- 
tentions. Accordingly he went to the 
tryst. He waited for some time, and at 
last he heard a quick, firm foot, and Mary 
Wells appeared. She was hooded with 
her scarlet shawl, that contrasted admir- 
ably with her coal-black hair; and out 
of this scarlet frame her dark eyes glit- 
tered. She stood before him in silence. 

He said nothing. 

She was silent too for some time. 
she spoke first. 

“Well, sir, you promised one, and you 
have married another. Now what are 
you going to do for me?”’ 

‘What can Ido, Mary? I’m not the 
first that wanted to marry for love, but 
money came in his way and tempted 
him.”’ 

‘“No, you are not the first. But that’s 
neither here nor there, sir. That chalk- 
faced girl has bought you away from me 
with her money, and now I mean to have 
my share on’t.’’ | 

‘‘Qh, if that is all,’’ said Richard, ‘‘ we 
can soon settle it. Iwas afraid you were 
going to talk about a broken heart, and 
all that stuff. You are a good, sensible 
girl; and too beautiful to want a husband 
long. Ill give you fifty pounds to for- 
give me.’’ 

“Fifty pounds!’’ said Mary Wells, 
contemptuously. ‘*What! when you 
promised me I should be your wife to- 
day, and lady of Huntercombe Hall by- 
and-by? Fifty pounds!. No; not five 
fifties.”’ 

“ Well, I'll give you seventy-five ; and 
if that won’t do, you must go to law, 
and see what you can get.’’ 

“What, han’t you had your bellyful 
of law? Mind, it is an unked thing to 


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A TERRIBLE 


forswear yourself, and that is what you 
done at the ’sizes. I have seen what you 
did swear about your letter to my sister ; 
Sir Charles have got it all wrote down 
in his study: and you swore a le to the 
judge, as you swore a lie to me here 
under heaven, you villain!’’ She raised 
her voice very loud. ‘‘ Don’t you gain- 
say me, or I[’ll soon have you by the heels 
in jail for your lies. You’ll do as I bid 
you, and very lucky to be let off so cheap. 
You was to be my master, but you chose 
her instead: well, then, you shall be my 
servant. You shall come here every 
Saturday at eight o’clock, and bring me 
a sovereign, which I never could keep a 
lump o’ money, and I have had one or 
two from Rhoda; so Ill take it a sov- 
ereign a week till | get a husband of my 
own sort, and then you’ll have to come 
down handsome once for all.”’ 

Bassett knitted his brows and thought 
hard. His natural impulse was’ to defy 
her; but it struck him that a great many 
things might happen in a few months; so 
at last he said, humbly, ‘‘I consent. I 
have been to blame. Only I’d rather pay 
you this money in some other way.”’ 

‘“ My way, or none.”’ 

“« Very well, then, I will bring it you 
as you say.”’ 

‘Mind you do, then,’’ said Mary Wells, 
and turned haughtily on her heel. 

Bassett never ventured to absent him- 
self at the hour, and, at first, the black- 
mail was delivered and received with 
scarcely a word ; but by-and-by old hab- 
its so far revived that some little conver- 
sation took place. 

Then, after a while, Bassett used to tell 
her he was unhappy, and she used to 
‘reply she was glad of it. 

Then he began to speak slightingly of 
his wife, and say what a fool he had been 
to marry a poor, silly nonentity, when he 
might have wedded a beauty. 

Mary Wells, being intensely vain, list- 
ened with complacency to this, although 
she replied coldly and harshly. 

By-and-by her natural volubility over- 
powered her, and she talked to Bassett 
about herself and Huntercombe House, 
but always with a secret reserve. 


| was cruel. 


TEMPTATION. 65 


Later—such is the force of habit—each 
used to look forward with satisfaction to 
the Saturday meeting, although each dis- 
trusted and feared the other at bottom. 

Later still that came to pass which 
Mary Wells had planned from the first 
with deep malice, and that shrewd in- 
sight into human nature which many a 
low woman has—the cooler she was the 
warmer did Richard Bassett grow, till 
at last, contrasting his pale, meek little 
wife with this glowing Hebe, he con- 
ceived an unholy liking for the latter. 
She met it sometimes with coldness and 
reproaches, sometimes with affected 
alarm, sometimes with a_ half-yielding 
manner, and so tormented him to her 
heart’s content, and undermined his af- 
fection for his wife. Thus she revenged 
herself on them both to her heart’s con- 
tent. 

But malice so perverse is apt to recoil 
on itself; and women, in particular, 
should not undertake a long and subtle 
revenge of this sort; since the strongest 
have their hours of weakness, and are 
surprised into things they never intended. 
The subsequent history of Mary Wells 
will exemplify this. Meantime, however, 
meek little Mrs. Bassett was no match 
for the beauty and low cunning of her 
rival. 

Yet a time came when she defended 
herself unconsciously. She did some- 
thing that made her husband most 
solicitous for her welfare and happiness. 
He began to watch her health with 
maternal care, to shield her from 
draughts, to take care of her diet, to 
indulge her in all her whims instead of 
snubbing her, and to pet her, till she 
was the happiest wife in England for a 
time. She deserved this at his hands, 
for she assisted him there where his 
heart was fixed; she aided his hobby: 
did more for it than any other creature 
in England could, 


To return to Huntercombe Hall: the 
loving couple that owned it were no long- 
er happy. The hope of offspring was now 
deserting them, and the disappointment 


They suffered deeply, with 
READE—VOL. VIII. 


"3 


66 WORKS OF CHARLES RHADE. 


this difference—that Lady Bassett pined | tact of women—a quality the narrow com- 


and Sir Charles Bassett fretted. 

The woman's grief was more pure and 
profound than the man’s. If there had 
been no Richard Bassett in the world, 
still her bosom would have yearned and 
pined, and the great cry of Nature, 
<<Give me children or I die,’’ would have 
been in her heart, though it would never 
have risen to her lips. 

Sir Charles had, of course, less of this 
profound instinct than his wife, but he 
had it too; only in him the feeling was 
adulterated and at the same time im- 
bittered by one less simple and noble. 
An enemy sat at his gate. That enemy, 
whose enduring malice had at last be- 
gotten equal hostility in the childless 
baronet, was now married, and would 
probably have heirs; and, if so, that 
hateful brood—the spawn of an anony- 
mous letter-writer—would surely inherit 
Bassett and Huntercombe, succeeding to 
Sir Charles Bassett, deceased without 
issue. This chafed the childless man, 
and gradually undermined a temper 
habitually sweet, though subject, as we 
have seen, to violent ebullitions where the 
provocation was intolerable. Sir Charles, 
then, smarting under his wound, spoke 
now and then rather unkindly to the wife 
he loved so devotedly; that is to say, his 
manner sometimes implied that he blamed 
her for their joint calamity. 

Lady Bassett submitted to these stings 
in silence. They were raré, and speedily 
followed by touching regrets; and even 
had it not been so she would have borne 
them with resignation; for this mother- 
less wife loved her husband with all a 
wife’s devotion and a mother’s unselfish 


patience. Let this be remembered to 
her credit. Itis the truth, and she may 
need it. 


Her own yearning was too deep and 
sad for fretfulness; yet though, unlike 
her husband’s, it never broke out in an- 
ger, the day was gone by when she could 
keep it always silent. It welled out of 
her at times in ways that were truly 
womanly and touching. 

When she called on a wife the lady was 
sure to parade her children. The boasted 


pass of which has escaped their undis- 
criminating eulogists—was sure to be 
swept away by maternal egotism; and 
then poor Lady Bassett would admire 
the children loudly, and kiss them, to 
please the cruel egotist, and hide the 
tears that rose to her own eyes; but 
she would shorten her visit. 

When a child died in the village Mary 
Wells was sure to be sent with words of 
comfort and substantial marks of sym- 
pathy. 

Scarcely a day passed that something 
or other did not happen to make the 
wound bleed; but I will confine myself 
to two occasions, on each of which her 
heart’s agony spoke out, and so revealed 
how much it must have endured in si- 
lence. 

Since the day when Sir Charles allowed 
her to sit in a little room close to his study 
while he received Mr. Wheeler’s visit she 
had fitted up that room, and often sat 
there to be near Sir Charles; and he 
would sometimes call her in and tell her 
his justice cases. One day she was there 
when the constable brought in a prisoner 
and several witnesses. The accused was 
a stout, florid girl, with plump cheeks 
and pale gray eyes. She seemed all 
health, stupidity, and simplicity. She 
carried a child on her left arm. No 
dweller in cities could suspect this face 
of crime. As well indict a calf. 

Yet the witnesses proved beyond a 
doubt that she had been seen with her 
baby in the neighborhood of a certain 
old well on a certain day at noon; that 
soon after noon she had been seen on the 
road without her baby, and being asked 
what had become of it, had said she had 
left it with her aunt, ten miles off; and 
that about an hour after that a faint cry 
had been heard at the bottom of the old 
well—it was ninety feet deep; people had 
assembled, and a brave farmer’s boy had 
been lowered in the bight of a cart-rope, 
and ‘had brought up a dead hen, and a 
live child, bleeding at the cheek, having 
fallen on a heap of fagots at the bottom 
of the well ; which child was the prisoner’s. 

Sir Charles had the evidence written 


A TERRIBLE 


down, and then told the accused she 
might make a counter-statement if she 
chose, but it would be wiser to say noth- 
ing at all. 

Thereupon the accused dropped him a 
little short courtesy, looked him steadily 
in the face with her pale gray eyes, and 
delivered herself as follows: 

«Tf you please, sir, 1 was a-sitting by 
th’ old well, with baby in my arms; and 
I was mortal tired, I was, wi’ carring 
of him; he be uncommon heavy for his 
age; and, if you please, sir, he is uncom- 
mon resolute ; and while I was so he give 
a leap right out of my arms and fell down 
th’ old well. I screams, and runs away 
to tell my brother’s wife, as lives at top 
of the hill; but she was gone into North 
Wood for dry sticks to light her oven ; 
and when I comes back they had got 
him out of the well, and I claims him 
directly ; and the constable said we must 
come before you, sir; so here we be.”’ 

This she delivered very glibly, without 
tremulousness, hesitation, or the shadow 
of a blush, and dropped another little 
courtesy at the end to Sir Charles. 

Thereupon he said not one word to her, 
but committed her for trial. and gave the 
farmer’s boy a Sovereign. 

The people were no sooner gone than 
Lady Bassett came in, with the tears 
streaming, and threw herself at her hus- 
band’s knees. ‘‘Oh, Charles! can such 
things be? Does God give a child to a 
woman that has the heart to kill it, and 
refuse one to me, who would give my 
heart’s blood to save a hair of its little 
head? Oh, what have we done that he 
singles us out to be so cruel to us ?”’ 

_ Then Sir Charles tried to comfort her, 
but could not, and the childless ones wept 
together. 


It began to be whispered that Mrs. 
Bassett-was in the family way. Neither 
Sir Charles nor Lady Bassett mentioned 
this rumor. It would have been like rub- 
bing vitriol into their own wounds. But 
this reserve was broken through one day. 
It was a sunny afterncon in June, just 
thirteen months after Mr. Bassett’s wed- 
ding—Lady Bassett was with her hus- 


‘ 


TEMPTATION. 67 
band in his study, settling invitations 
for a ball, and writing them—when the 
church-bells struck up a merry peal. 
They both left off, and looked at each 
other eloquently. Lady Bassett went 
out, but soon returned, looking pale and 
wild. 

‘ VYes!’’ said she, with forced calm- 
ness. Then, suddenly losing her self- 
command, she broke out, pointing 
through the window at Highmore, ‘‘ He 
has got a fine boy—to take our place 
here. Kill me, Charles! Send me to 
heaven to pray for you, and take another 
wife that will love you less but be like 
other wives. That villain has married a 
fruitful vine, and’’ (lifting both arms to 
heaven, with a gesture unspeakably pit- 
eous, poetic, and touching) ‘“‘l am a bar- 
ren stock.”’ 


CHAPTER XIV. 


OF all the fools Nature produces with 
the help of Society, fathers of first-borns 
are about the most offensive. 

The mothers of ditto are bores too, 
flinging their human dumplings at every 
head ; but, considering the tortures they 
have suffered, and the anguish the little 
egotistical viper they have just hatched 
will most likely give them, and consider- 
ing further that their love of their first- 
born is greater than their pride, and their 
pride unstained by vanity, one must make 
allowances for them. 

But the male parent is not so excusa- 
ble. His fussy vanity is an inferior ar- 
ticle to the mother’s silly but amiable 
pride. His obtrusive affection is two- 
thirds of it egotism, and blindish ego- 
tism, too; for if, at the very commence- 
ment of the wife’s pregnancy the husband 
is sent to India, or hanged, the little 
angel,as they callit—Lord forgive them ! 
—is nurtured from aspeck toa mature 
infant by the other parent, and finally 


brought into the world by her just as 


68 


effectually as if her male confederate had 
been tied to her apron-string all the time, 
instead of expatriated or hanged. 

Therefore the Law—for want, I sup- 
pose, of studying Medicine—is a little 
inconsiderate in giving children to fath- 
ers, and taking them by force from such 
mother’s as can support them; and 
therefore let Gallina go on clucking over 
her first-born, but Gallus be quiet, or 
sing a little smaller. 

With these preliminary remarks, let 
me introduce to you a character new in 
fiction, but terribly old in history— 


THE CLUCKING COCK. 


Upon the birth of a son and heir Mr. 
Richard Bassett was inflated almost to 
bursting. He became suddenly hospit- 
able, collected all his few friends about 
him, and showed them all the Boy at 
great length, and talked Boy and little 
else. He went out into the world and 
made calls on people merely to remind 
them he had a son and heir. 

His self-gratulation took a dozen forms ; 
perhaps the most amusing, and the richest 
food for satire, was the mock-querulous 
style, of which he showed himself a mas- 
ter. 

“Don’t you ever marry,” said he to 
Wheeler and others. ‘‘Look at me; do 
you think I am the master of my own 
house? Not I; I am a regular slave. 
First, there is a monthly nurse, who 
orders me out of my wife’s presence, or 
graciously lets me in, just as she pleases ; 
that is Queen 1. Then there’s a wet- 
nurse, Queen 2, whom I must humor in 
everything, or she will quarrel with me, 
and avenge herself by souring her milk. 
But these are mild tyrants compared with 
the young King himself. If he does but 
squall we must all skip, and find out what 
he ails, or what he wants. As for me, I 
am looked upon as a necessary evil; the 
women seem to admit that a father is an 
incumbrance without which these little 
angels could not exist, but that is all.’’ 

He had a christening feast, and it was 
pretty well attended, for he reminded all 
he asked that the young Christian was 


WORKS OF CHARLES 


REHADE. 


the heir to the Bassett estates. They 
feasted, and the church-bells rang mer- 
rily. 

He had his pew in the church new 
lined with cloth, and took his wife to be 
churched. The nurse was in the pew too, 
with his son and heir. It squalled and 
spoiled the Liturgy. Thereat Gallus 
chuckled. 

He made a gravel-walk all along the 
ha-ha that separated his garden from 
Sir Charles’s, and called it ‘‘The Heir’s 
Walk.’’ Here the nurse and child used 
to parade on sunny afternoons. 

He got an army of workmen, and built 
a nursery fit for a duke’s nine children. 
It occupied two entire stories, and rose in 
the form of a square tower high above 
the rest of his house, which, indeed, was 
as humble as “ The Heir’s Tower ’”’ was 
pretentious. ‘‘ The Heir’s Tower ”’ had a 
flat lead roof easy of access, and from it 
you could inspect Huntercombe Hall, and 
see what was done on the lawn or at some 
of the windows. 

Here, in the August afternoons, Mr. and 
Mrs. Bassett used to sit drinking their 
tea, with nurse and child; and Bassett 
would talk to his unconscious boy, and 
tell him that the great house and all that 
belonged to it should be his in spite of 
the arts that had been used to rob him 
of it. 

Now, of course, the greater part of all 
this gratulation was merely amusing, and 
did no harm except stirring up the bile 
of a few old bachelors, and imbittering 
them worse than ever against clucking 
cocks, crowing hens, inflated parents, and 
matrimony in general. 

But the overflow of it reached Hunter- 
combe Hall, and gave cruel pain to the 
childless ones, over whom this inflated 
father was, in fact, exulting. 

As for the christening, and the bells 
that pealed for it, and the subsequent 
churching, they bore these things with 
sore hearts, and bravely, being things of 
course. But when it came to their ears 
that Bassett and his family called his new 
gravel-walk ‘‘ The Heir’s Walk,”’ and his 
ridiculous nursery ‘‘The Heir’s Tower,”’ 
this roused a bitter animosity, and, in- 


‘USI OUINIOA ‘Havay 


"ATX sajgdny) ‘uoynjidway a7q1ial, F— 


‘NVWOM DNINIVdSAd ‘SSHTGTIHO V Ad qu Luoddng 


A TERRIBLE 


deed, led to reprisals. Sir Charles built a 
long wall at the edge of his garden, shut- 
ting out ‘‘The Heir’s Walk ’’ and inter- 
cepting the view of his own premises from 
that walk. 

Then Mr. Bassett made a little hill at 
the end of his walk, so that the heir 
might get one peep over the wall at 
his rich inheritance. 

Then Sir Charles began to fell timber 
on a gigantic scale. He went to work 
with several gangs of woodmen, and all 
his woods, which were very extensive, 
rang with the ax, and the trees fell 
like corn. He made no secret that he 
was going to sell timber to the tune of 
several thousand pounds and settle it on 
his wife. 

Then Richard Bassett, through Wheel- 
er, his attorney, remonstrated in his own 
name, and that of his son, against this ex- 
cessive fall of timber on an entailed estate. 

Sir Charles chafed lke a lion stung by 
a gad-fly, but vouchsafed no reply: the 
answer came from Mr. Oldfield ; he said 
Sir Charles had a right under the entail 
to fell every stick of timber, and turn his 
woods into arable ground, if he chose; 
and even if he had not, looking at his age 
and his wife’s, it was extremely improb- 
able that Richard Bassett would inherit 
the estates: the said Richard Bassett 
was not personally named in the entail, 
and his rights were all in supposition: if 
Mr. Wheeler thought he could dispute 
both these positions, the Court of Chan- 
cery was open to his client. 

Then Wheeler advised Bassett to avoid 
the Court of Chancery in a matter so de- 
batable; and Sir Charles felled all the 
more for the protest. The dead bodies of 
the trees fell across each other, and day- 
light peeped through the thick woods. It 
was like the clearing of a primeval forest. 

Richard Bassett went about with a 
witness and counted the fallen. 

The poor were allowed the lopwood : 
they thronged in for miles round, and each 
built himself a great wood pile for the 
winter ; the poor blessed Sir Charles: he 
gave the proceeds, thirteen thousand 
pounds, to his wife for her separate use. 
He did not tie it up. He restricted her 


TEMPTATION. 69 
no further than this: she undertook never 
to draw above £100 at a time without 
consulting Mr, Oldfield as to the applica- 
tion. Sir Charles said he should add to 
this fund every year; his beloved wife 
should not be poor, even if the hated 
cousin should outlive him and turn her 
out of Huntercombe. 

And so passed the summer of that year; 
then the autumn; and then came a singu- 
larly mild winter. There was more hunt- 
ing than usual, and Richard Bassett, 
whom his wife’s fortune enabled to cut a 
better figure than before, was often in 
the field, mounted on a great bony horse 
that was not so fast as some, being half- 
bred, but a wonderful jumper. 

Even in this pastime the cousins were 
rivals. Sir Charles’s favorite horse was 
a magnificent thoroughbred, who was 
seldom far off at the finish: over good 
ground Richard’s cocktail had no chance 
with him; but sometimes, if toward the 
close of the run they came to stiff fallows 
and strong fences, the great strength of 
the inferior animal, and that prudent re- 
serve of his powers which distinguishes 
the canny cocktail from the _ higher- 
blooded animal, would give him the ad- 
vantage. 

Of this there occurred, ona certain 18th 
of November, an example fraught with 
very serious consequences. 

That day the hounds met on Sir 
Charles’s estate. Sir Charles and Lady 
Bassett breakfasted in Pink; he had on 
his scarlat coat, white tie, irreproachable 
buckskins, and top-boots. (It seemed a 
pity a speck of dirt should fall on them.) 
Lady Bassett was in her riding-habit ; 
and when she mounted her pony, and 
went to cover by his side, with her blue- 
velvet cap and her red-brown hair, she 
looked more like a brilliant flower than a 
mere woman. 

A veteran fox was soon found, and went 
away with unusual courage and speed, 
and Lady Bassett paced homeward to 
wait her lord’s return, with an anxiety 
men laugh at, but women can appreciate. 
It was a form of quiet suffering she had 
constantly endured, and never complained, 
nor even mentioned the subject to Sir 


70 WORKS 


Charles but once, and then he pooh- 
poohed her fancies. 

The hunt had a burst of about forty 
minutes that left Richard Bassett’s cock- 
tail in the rear; and the fox got into a 
large beech wood with plenty of briars, 
and kept dodging about it for two hours, 
and puzzled the scent repeatedly. 

Richard Bassett elected not to go wind- 
ing in and out among trees, risk his 
horse’s legs in rabbit-holes, and tire him 
for nothing. He had kept for years a 
little note book he called ‘‘ Statistics of 
Foxes,’’ and that told him an old dog-fox 
of uncommon strength, if dislodged from 
that particular wood, would slip into 
Bellman’s Coppice, and if driven out of 
that would face the music again, would 
take the open country for Higham Gorse, 
and probably be killed before he got 
there; but once there a regiment of 
scythes might cut him out, but bleeding, 
sneezing fox-hounds would never work 
him out at the tail of a long run. 

So Richard Bassett kept out of the 
wood, and went gently on to Bellman’s 
Coppice and waited outside. 

His book proved an oracle. After two 
hours’ dodging and maneuvering the fox 
came out at the very end of Bellman’s 
Coppice, with nothing near him but Rich- 
ard Bassett. Pug gave him the white of 
his eye in an ugly leer, and headed 
straight as a crow for Higham Gorse. 

Richard Bassett blew his horn, col- 
lected the hunt, and laid the dogs on. 
Away they went, close together, thun- 
der-mouthed on the hot scent. 

After a three miles’ gallop they sighted 
the fox for a moment just going over the 
crest of a rising ground two furlongs off. 
Then the hullahbaloo and _ excitement 
grew furious, and one electric fury ani- 
mated dogs, men, and horses. Another 
mile, and the fox ran in sight scarcely a 
furlong off; but many of the horses were 
distressed: the Bassetts, however, kept 
up, one by his horse being fresh, the 
other by his animal’s native courage and 
speed. 

Then came some meadows, bounded by 
a thick hedge, and succeeded by a plowed 
field of unusual size—eighty acres. 


OF CHARLES 


READE. 


When the fox darted into this hedge 
the hounds were yelling at his heeis; the 
hunt burst through the thin fence, ex- 
pecting to see them kill close to it. 

But the wily fox had other resources. 
at his command than speed. Appreciat- 
ing his peril, he doubled and ran sixty 
yards down the ditch, and the impetu- 
ous hounds rushed forward and overran 
the scent. They raved about to and fro, 
till at last one of the gentlemen descried 
the fox running down a double furrow in 
the middle of the field. He had got into 
this, and so made his way more smoothly 
than his four-footed pursuers could. The 
dogs were laid on, and away they went 
helter-skelter. 

At the end of this stiff ground a stiffish 
leap awaited them; an old quickset had 
been cut down, and all the elm-trees that 
grew in it, and a new quickset hedge set 
ona high bank with double ditches. 

The huntsman had an Irish horse that 
laughed at this fence; he jumped on to 
the bank, and then jumped off it into the 
next field. 

Richard Bassett’s cocktail came up 
slowly, rose high, and landed his fore- 
feet in the field, and so scrambled on. 

Sir Charles went at it rather rashly ; 
his horse, tried hard by the fallow, 
caught his heels against the edge of 
the bank, and went headlong into the 
other ditch, throwing Sir Charles over 
his head into the field. Unluckily some 
of the trees were lying about, and Sir 
Charles’s head struck one of these in 
falling; the horse blundered out again, 
and gallopod after the hounds, but the 
rider lay there motionless. 

Nobody stopped at first; the pace was 
too good to inquire; but presently Rich- 
ard Bassett, who had greeted the acci- 
dent with a laugh, turned round in his’ 
saddle, and saw his cousin motionless, 
and two or three gentlemen dismounting 
at the place. These were newcomers. 
Then he resigned the hunt, and rode 
back. 

Sir Charles’s cap was crushed in, and 
there was blood on his white waistcoat ; 
he was very pale, and quite insensible. 

The gentlemen raised him, with ex- 


A THRRIBLE 


pressions of alarm and kindly concern, 
and inquired of each other what was 
best to be done. 

Richard Bassett saw an opportunity to 
conciliate opinion, and seized it. ‘‘ He 
must be taken home directly,’’ said he. 
«We must carry him to that farm- 
house, and get a cart for him.”’ 

He helped carry him accordingly. 

The farmer lent them a cart, with 
straw, and they iaid the _ insensible 
baronet gently on it, Richard Bassett 
supporting his head. ‘‘ Gentlemen,”’ 
said he, rather pompously, ‘‘at such 
a moment everything but the tie of 
kindred is forgotten.’? Which resound- 
ing sentiment was warmly applauded by 
the honest squires. 

They took him slowly and carefully 
toward Huntercombe, distant about two 

miles from the scene of the accident. 


This 18th November Lady Bassett 
passed much as usual with her on hunt- 
ing days. She was quietly patient till 
the afternoon, and then restless, and 
could not settle down in any part of the 
house till she got to a little room on the 
first floor, with a bay-window command- 
ing the country over which Sir Charles 
was hunting. In this she sat, with her 
head against one of the mullions, and 
eyed the country-side as far as she could 
see. 

Presently she heard a rustle, and there 
was Mary Wells standing and looking at 
her with evident emotion. 

“What is the matter, Mary?” said 
Lady Bassett. 

“Oh, my lady!’? said Mary. And 
She trembled, and her hands worked. 

Lady Bassett started up with alarm 
painted in her countenance. 

*« My lady, there’s something wrong in 
the hunting field.’ 

‘¢ Sir Charles! ”’ 

** An accident, they say.”’ 

Lady Bassett put her hand to her heart 
with a faint cry. Mary Wells ran to 
her. 

“Come with me _ directly!’’ cried 
Lady Bassett. She snatched up her 
bonnet, and in another minute she and 


TEMPTATION. 71 
Mary Wells were on their road to the 
village, questioning every body they 
met. 

But nobody they questioned could tell 
them anything. The stable-boy, who had 
told the report in the kitchen of Hunter- 
combe, said he had it from a gentleman’s 
groom, riding by as he stood at the 
gates. 

The ill news thus flung in at the gate 
by one passing rapidly by was not con- 
firmed by any further report, and Lady 
Bassett began to hope it was false. 

But a terrible confirmation came at 
last. 

In the outskirts of the village mistress 
and servant encountered a sorrowful pro- 
cession: the cart itself, followed by five 
gentlemen on horseback, pacing slowly, 
and downcast as at a funeral. 

In the cart Sir Charles’ Bassett, 
splashed all over with mud, and his 
white waistcoat bloody, lay with his 
head upon Richard Bassett’s knee. His 
hair was wet with blood, some of which 
had trickled down his cheek and dried. 
Even Richard’s buckskins were slightly 
stained with it. 

At that sight Lady Bassett uttered a. 
scream, which those who heard it never 
forgot, and flung herself, Heaven knows 
how, into the cart; but she got there, 
and soon had that bleeding head on her 
bosom. She took no notice of Richard 
Bassett, but she got Sir Charles away 
from him, and the cart took her, em- 
bracing him tenderly, and kissing his 
hurt head, and moaning over him, all 
through the village to Huntercombe 
Hall. 

Four years ago they passed through 
the same village in a carriage-and-four 
—bells pealing, rustics shouting—to take 
possession of Huntercombe, and fill it 
with pledges of their great and happy 
love; and as they flashed past the heir 
at law shrank hopeless into his little cot- 
tage. Now, how changed the pageant ! 
—a farmer’s cart, a splashed and bleed- 
ing and senseless form in it, supported by 
a childless, despairing woman, one weep- 
ing attendant walking at the side, and, 
among the gentlemen pacing slowly be- 


%2 WORKS 
hind, the heir at law, with his head 
lowered in that decent affectation of 
regret which all heirs can put on to 
hide the indecent complacency within. 


CHAPTER XV. 


At the steps of Huntercombe Hall the 
servants streamed out, and relieved the 
strangers of the sorrowful load. Sir 
Charles was carried into the Hall, and 
Richard Bassett turned away, with one 
triumphant flash of his eye, quickly sup- 
pressed, and walked with .impenetrable 
countenance and studied demeanor into 
Highmore House. 

Even here he did not throw off the 
mask. It peeled off by degrees. He be- 
gan by telling his wife, gravely enough, 
Sir Charles had met with a severe fall, 
and he had attended to him and taken 
him home. 

«‘ Ah, lam glad you did that, Richard,”’’ 
said Mrs. Bassett. ‘‘ And is he very 
badly hurt ? ”’ 

‘“‘T am afraid he will hardly get over 
it. He never spoke. He just groaned 
when they took him down from the cart 
at Huntercombe.’’ 

“Poor Lady Bassett!’ 

“‘Ay, it will be a bad job for her. 
Jane !’’ 

SS Vesmacan..: 

‘‘There is a providence in it. The fall 
would never have killed him; but his 
head struck a tree upon the ground; and 
that tree was one of the very elms he had 
just cut down to rob our boy.”’ 

“* Indeed ? ”’ 

“Yes; he was felling the very hedge- 
row timber, and this was one of the old 
elms ina hedge. He must have done it 
out of spite, for elm-wood fetches no 
price; it is good for nothing I know of, 
except coffins. Well, he has cut down 
8. 


“Poor man! Richard, death recon- 


OF CHARLES READE. 


ciles enemies. Surely you can forgive 
him now.’’ 

‘‘T mean to try.’’ 

Richard Bassett seemed now to have 
imbibed the spirit of quicksilver. His 
occupations were not actually enlarged, 
yet, somehow or other, he seemed full of 
business. He was all complacent bustle 
about nothing. He left off inveighing 
against Sir Charles. And, indeed, if you 
are one of those weak spirits to whom 
censure is intolerable, there is a cheap 
and easy way to moderate the rancor of 
detraction—you have only to die. Let 
me comfort genius in particular with this 
little recipe. 

Why, on one occasion, Bassett actually 
snubbed Wheeler for a mere allusion. 
That worthy just happened to remark, 
‘““No more felling of timber on Bassett 
Manor for a while.’ 

‘Tor shame !?’-said> Richard. **The 
man had his faults, but he had his good 
qualities too: a high-spirited gentleman, 
beloved by his friends and respected by 
all the county. His successor will find 
it hard to reconcile the county to his 
loss.”’ 

Wheeler 
satirically. 

This eulogy was never repeated, for Sir 
Charles proved ungrateful—he omitted 
to die, after all. } 

Attended by first-rate physicians, tend- 
erly nursed and watched by Lady Bassett 
and Mary Wells, he got better by de- 
grees ; and every stage of his slow but 
hopeful progress was communicated to 
the servants and the village, and to the 
ladies and gentlemen who rode up to 
the door every day and left their cards 
of inquiry. 

The most attentive of all these was the 
new rector, a young clergyman, who had 
obtained the living by exchange. He 
was a man highly gifted both in body 
and mind—a swarthy Adonis, whose 
large dark eyes from the very first 
turned with glowing admiration on the 
blonde beauties of Lady Bassett. 

He came every day to inquire after her 
husband ; and she sometimes left the suf- 
ferer a minute or two to make her report 


stared, and then grinned 


A THRRIBLE 


to him in person. At other times Mary 
Wells was sent tohim. That artful girl 
soon discovered what had escaped her 
mistress’s observation. 

The bulletins were favorable, and wel- 
comed on all sides. 

Richard Bassett alone was incredulous. 
‘‘T want to see him about again,’’ said 
he. ‘Sir Charles is not the man to lie 
in bed if he was really better. As for the 
doctors, they flatter a fellow till the last 
moment. Let me see him on his legs, 
and then I’ll believe he is better.’’ 

Strange to say, obliging Fate granted 
Richard Bassett this moderate request. 
One frosty but sunny afternoon, as he 
was inspecting his coming domain from 
‘¢The Heir’s Tower,’’ he saw the Hall 
door open, and a muffled figure come 
slowly down the steps between two wom- 
en. It was Sir Charles, feeble but con- 
valescent. He crept about on the sunny 
gravel for about ten minutes, and then 
his nurses conveyed him tenderly 4n 
again. 

This sight, which might have touched 
with pity a more generous nature, start- 
led Richard Bassett, and then moved his 
bile. ‘‘I was a fool,” said he; ‘“‘ nothing 
will ever kill that man. He will see me 
out; see us all out. And that Mary 
Wells nurses him, and I dare say in love 
with him by this time; the fools can’t 
nurse a man without. Curse the whole 
pack of ye!’’ he yelled, and turned away 
in rage and disgust. 

That same night he met Mary Wells, 
and, in a strange fit of jealousy, began to 
make hot protestations of love to her. 
He knew it was no use reproaching her, 
so he went on the other tack. 

She received his vows with cool com- 
placency, but would only stay a min- 
ute, and would only talk of her master 
and mistress, toward whom her heart 
was really warming in their trouble. She 
spoke hopefully, and said: “ ’Tisn’t as if 
he was one of your faint-hearted ones as 
meet death half-way. Why, the second 
day, when he could scarce speak, he sees 
me crying by the bed, and says he, al- 
most in a whisper, ‘ What are you crying 
for?’ ‘Sir,’ says I, ‘’tis for you—to see 


TEMPTATION. 43 


| 

you lie ikea ghost.’ ‘Then you be wast- 
ing of salt-water,’ says he. ‘I wish I 
may, sir,’ says I. So then he raised him- 
self up a little bit. ‘Look at me,’ says 
he; ‘’ma Bassett. Iam not the breed 
to die for a crack on the skull, and leave 
you all to the mercy of them that would 
have no mercy ’—which he meant you, I 
suppose. So he ordered me to leave cry- 
ing, which I behooved to obey; for he 
will be master, mind ye, while he have a 
finger to wag, poor dear gentleman, he 
will.’’ 

And, soon after this, she resisted all 
his attempts to detain her, and scudded 
back to the house, leaving Bassett to his 
reflections, which were exceedingly bitter. 

Sir Charles got better, and at last used 
to walk daily with Lady Bassett. Their 
favorite stroll wasup and down the lawn, 
close under the boundary wall he had 
built to shut out “ The Heir’s Walk.’’ 

The afternoon sun struck warm upon 
that wall and the walk by its side. 

On the other side a nurse often carried 
little Dicky Bassett, the heir ; but neither 
of the promenaders could see each other 
for the wall. ; 

Richard Bassett, on the contrary, from 
‘‘The Heir’s Tower,’’ could see both 
these little parties; and, as some men 
cannot keep away from what causes their 
pain, he used to watch these loving walks, 
and see Sir Charles get stronger and 
stronger, till at last, instead of leaning 
on his beloved wife, he could march by 
her side, or even give her his arm. 

Yet the picture was, in a great degree, 
delusive ; for, except during these bliss- 
ful walks, when the sun shone on him, 
and Love and Beauty soothed him, Sir 
Charles was not the man he had been. 
The shake he had received appeared to 
have damaged his temper strangely. 
He became so irritable that several of his 
servants left him; and to his wife he re- 
pined; and his childless condition, which 
had been hitherto only a deep disappoint- 
ment, became in his eyes a calamity that 
outweighed his many blessings. He had 
now narrowly escaped dying without an 
heir, and this seemed to sink into his mind, 
and, co-operating with the concussion his 


74 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


brain had received, brought him into a 


morbid state. He brooded on it, and 
spoke of it, and got back to it from every 
other topic, in a way that distressed Lady 
Bassett unspeakably. She consoled him 
bravely; but often, when she was alone, 
her gentle courage gave way, and she 
cried bitterly to herself. 

Her distress had one effect she little 
expected ; it completed what her invari- 
able kindness had begun, and actually 
won the heart of a servant. Those who 
really know that tribe will agree with me 
that this was a marvelous conquest. Yet 
so it was; Mary Wells conceived for her 
a real affection, and showed it by unre- 
mitting attention, and a soft and tender 
voice, that soothed Lady Bassett, and 
drew many a Silent but grateful glance 
from her dove-like eyes. 

Mary listened, and heard enough to 
blame Sir Charles for his peevishness, and 
she began to throw out little expressions 
of dissatisfaction at him; but these were 
so promptly discouraged by the faithful 
wife that she drew in again and avoided 
that line. But one day, coming softly as 
a cat, She heard Sir Charles and Lady 
Bassett talking over their calamity. Sir 
Charles was saying that it was Heaven’s 
curse; that all the poor people in the vil- 
lage had children ; that Richard Bassett’s 
weak, puny little wife had brought him an 
heir, and was about to make him a par- 
ent again; he alone was marked out and 
doomed to be the last of hisrace. ‘“ And 
yet,’ said he, ‘‘if I had married any 
other woman, and you had married any 
other man, we should have had children 
by the dozen, I suppose.”’ 

Upon the whole, though he said noth- 
ing palpably unjust, he had the tone of a 
man blaming his wife as the real cause 
of their joint calamity, under which she 
suffered a deeper, nobler, and more silent 
anguish than himself. This was hard to 
bear; and when Sir Charles went away, 
Mary Wells ran in, with an angry ex- 
pression on the tip of her tongue. 

She found Lady Bassett in a pitiable 
condition, lying rather than leaning on 
the table, with her hair loose about her, 
sobbing as if her heart would break. 


All that was good in Mary Wells 
tugged at her heart-strings. She flung 
herself on her knees beside her, and seiz- 
ing her mistress’s hand, and drawing it 
to her bosom, fell to crying and sobbing 
along with her. 

This canine devotion took Lady Bassett 
by surprise. She turned her tearful eyes 
upon her sympathizing servant, and said, 
“Oh, Mary!’ and her soft hand pressed 
the girl’s harder palm gratefully. 

Mary spoke first. ‘Oh, my lady,’’ she 
sobbed, ‘‘it breaks my heart to see you 
so. And what ashame to blame you for 
what is no fault of yourn. If I was your 
husband the cradles would soon be full in 
this house; but these fine gentlemen, 
they be old before their time with smok- 
ing of tobacco; and then to come and lay 
the blame on we! ”’ 

‘“‘“Mary, I value you very much—more 
than I ever did a servant in my life; but 
if you speak against your master we shall 
part.”’ 7 

“La, my lady, | wouldn’t for the world. 
Sir Charles isa perfect gentleman. Why, 
he gave me a Sovereign only the other day 
for nursing of him; but he didn’t ought 
to blame you for no fault of yourn, and 
to make youcry. It tears me inside out 
to see you cry; you that is so good to 
rich and poor. I wouldn’t vex myself so 
for that: dear heart, *twas always so; 
God sends meat to one house, and mouths 
to another.’’ 

“‘T could be patient if poor Sir Charles 
was not so unhappy,” sighed Lady Bas- 
sett; “‘but if ever you are a wife, Mary, 
you will know how wretched it makes us 
to see a beloved husband unhappy.’’ 

‘Then ’d make him happy,”’’ said 
Mary. 

«¢ Ah, if I only could !”’ 

“Oh, I could tell you a way; for I 
have known it done; and now he is as 
happy as a prince.. You see, my lady, 
some men are like children; to make 
them happy you must give them their 
own way; and so, if Iwas in your place, 
I wouldn’t make two bites of a cherry, 
for sometimes I think he will fret himself 
out of the world for want on’t.’’ 

‘‘ Heaven forbid ! ’’ 


A TERRIBLE 


“‘Tt is my belief you would not be long 
behind him.’’ 

‘No, Mary. Why should [?”’ 

<¢Then—whisper, my lady!”’ 

And, although Lady Bassett drew 
slightly back at this freedom, Mary 
Wells poured into her ear a proposal 
that made her stare and shiver. 

As for the girl’s own face, it was as 
unmoved as if it had been bronze. 

Lady Bassett drew back, and eyed her 
askant with amazement and terror. 

«‘What is this you have dared to say ?”’ 

““Why, it is done every day.” 

“By people of your class, perhaps. 
No; I don’t believe it. Mary, I have 
been mistaken in you. Iam afraid you 
are a vicious girl. Leave me, please. I 
can’t bear the sight of you.’’ 

Mary went away, very red, and the 
‘tear.in her eye. 

In the evening Lady Bassett gave 
Mary Wells a month’s warning, and 
Mary accepted it doggedly, and thought 
herself very cruelly used. 

After this mistress and maid did not 
exchange an unnecessary word for many 
days. | 

This notice to leave was very bitter to 
Mary Wells, for she was in the very act 
of making a conquest. Young Drake, 
a very small farmer and tenant of Sir 
Charles, had fallen in love with her, and 
she hiked him and had resolved he should 
marry her, with which view she was play- 
ing the tender but coy maiden very pret- 
tily. But Drake, though young and very 
much in love, was advised by his mother, 
and evidently resolved to go the old- 
fashioned way—keep company a year, 
and know the girl before offering the 
ring. ; 

Just before her month was out a more 
Serious trouble threatened Mary Wells. 

Her low, artful amour with Richard 
Bassett had led to its natural results. 
By degrees she had gone further than 
she intended, and now the fatal conse- 
quences looked her in the face. 

She found herself in an odious position ; 
for her growing regard for young Drake, 
though not a violent attachment, was 
enough to set her more and more against 


TEMPTATION. 75 
Richard Bassett, and she was preparing 
an entire separation from the latter when 
the fatal truth dawned on her. 

Then there was a temporary revulsion 
of feeling ; she told her condition to Bas- 
sett, and implored him, with many tears, 
to aid her to disappear for a time and 
hide her misfortune, especially from her 
sister. 

Mr. Bassett heard her, and then gave 
her an answer that made her blood run 
cold. ‘‘ Why do you come to me ?”’ said 
he. ‘*Why don’t you go to the right 
man—young Drake ?”’ | 

He then told her he had had her 
watched, and she must not think to 
make a fool of him. She was as inti- 
mate with the young farmer as with 
him, and was in his company every day. 

Mary Wells admitted that Drake was 
courting her, but said he was a civil, re- 
spectful young man, who desired to make 
her his wife. ‘‘ You have lost me that,’’ 
said she, bursting into tears ; *‘ and so, for 
God’s sake, show yourself a man for once, 
and see me through my trouble.’’ 

The egotist disbelieved, or affected not 
to believe her, and said, ‘‘ When there 
are two it is always the gentleman you 
girls deceive. But you can’t make a fool 
of me, Mrs. Drake. Marry the farmer, 
and I’ll give you a wedding present ; that 
is all I can do for any other man’s sweet- 
heart. I have got my own family to pro- 
vide for, and it is all I can contrive to 
make both ends meet.’’ 

He was cold and _ inflexible to her 
prayers. Then she tried threats. He 
laughed at them. Said he, ‘‘ The time 
is gone by for that: if you wanted to sue 
me for breach of promise, you should 
have done it at once; not waited eigh- 
teen months and taken another sweet- 
heart first. Come, come; you played 
your little game. You made me come 
here week after week and bleed a sover- 
eign. A woman that loved a man would 
never have been so hard on him as you 
were on me. I grinned and bore it; but 
when you ask me to own another man’s 
child, a man of your own sort that you 
are in love with—you hate me—that is a 
little too much: no, Mrs. Drake; if that 


NY ee 


76 WORKS 


is your game we will fight it out—before 
the public if you like.’’ And, having de- 
livered this with a tone of harsh and loud 
defiance, he left her—left her forever. 
She sat down upon the cold ground and 
rocked herself. Despair was cold at her 
heart. 

She sat in that forlorn state for more 
than an hour. Then she got up and went 
to her mistress’s room and sat by the fire, 
for her limbs were cold as well as her 
heart. 

She sat there, gazing at the fire and 
sighing heavily, till Lady Bassett came 
up to bed. She then went through her 
work like an automaton, and every now 
and then a deep sigh came from her 
breast. 

Lady Bassett heard her sigh, and 
looked at her. Her face was altered ; 
a sort of sullen misery was written on it. 
Lady Bassett was quick at reading faces, 
and this look alarmed her. *‘ Mary,”’’ said 
she, kindly, “‘is there anything the mat- 
ter ? ”’ 

No reply. 

“¢ Are you unwell ? ”’ 

BING. a) 

«¢ Are you in trouble? ”’ 

“ Ay!” with a burst of tears. 

Lady Bassett let her cry, thinking it 
would relieve her, and then spoke to her 
again with the languid pensiveness of a 
woman who has also her trouble. ‘‘ You 
have been very attentive to Sir Charles, 
and a kind good servant to me, Mary.’’ 

“* You are mocking me, my lady,”’ said 
Mary, bitterly. ‘‘ You wouldn’t have 
turned me off for a word if I had been a 
good servant.’’ 

Lady Bassett colored high, and was 
silenced fora moment. At last she said, 
“‘T feel it must seem harsh to you. You 
don’t know how wicked it was to tempt 
me. But it is not as if you had done any- 
thing wrong. I do not feel bound to 
mention mere words; I shall give you an 
- excellent character, Mary—indeed I have. 
I think Ihave got a good place for you. 
I shall know to-morrow, and when it is 
settled we will look over my wardrobe to- 
gether.”’ 

This proposal implied a boxful of pres- 


OF CHARLES READE. 


ents, and would have made Mary’s dark 
eyes flash with delight at another time ; 
but she was past all that now. She in- 
terrupted Lady Bassett with this strange 
speech: ‘‘ You are very kind, my lady; 
will you lend me the key of your medicine 
chest ? ”’ 

Lady Bassett looked surprised, but 
said, ‘‘Certainly, Mary,’’ and held out 
the keys. 

But, before Mary could take them, she 
considered a moment, and asked her 
what medicine she required. 

‘Only a little laudanum.”’ 


‘““No, Mary; not while you look like 
that, and refuse to tell me your trouble. 
Tam your mistress, and must exert my 
authority for your good. ‘Tell me at 
once what is the matter.” 

*“1’d bite my tongue off sooner.’’ 

“You are wrong, Mary. I am sure I 
should be your best friend. I feel much 
indebted to you for the attention and the 
affection you have shown me, and I am 
grieved to see you so despondent. Make 
a friend of me. There—think it over, 
and talk to me again to-morrow.’’ 

Mary Wells took the true servant’s 
view of Lady Bassett’s kindness. She 
looked at it as a trap; not, indeed, set 
with malice prepense, but still a trap. 
She saw that Lady Bassett meant kindly 
at present; but, for all that, she was 
sure that if she told the truth, her mis- 
tress would turn against her, and say, 
‘¢Oh! I had no idea your trouble arose 
out of your own imprudence. I can do 
nothing for a vicious girl.’ 

She resolved therefore to say nothing, 
or else to tell some he or other quite wide 
of the mark. 

Deplorable as this young woman’s sit- 
uation was, the duplicity and coarseness 
of mind which had brought her into it 
would have somewhat blunted the mental 
agony such a situation must inflict; but 
it was aggravated by a special terror ; 
she knew that if she was found out she 
would lose the only sure friend she had 
in the world. 

The fact is, Mary Wells had seen a 
great deal of life during the two years 


A THRRIBLE 


she was out of the reader’s sight. Rhoda 
had been very good to her; had set her 
up in a lodging-house, at her earnest re- 
quest. She misconducted. it, and failed : 
threw it up in disgust, and begged Rhoda 
to put her in the public line. Rhoda 
complied. Mary made a mess of the 
public-house. Then Rhoda showed her 
she was not fit to govern anything, and 
drove her into service again ; and in that 
condition. having no more cares than a 
child, and plenty of work to do, and 
many a present from Rhoda, she had 
been happy. 

But Rhoda, though she forgave blun- 
ders, incapacity for business, and waste 
of money, had always told her plainly 
there was one thing she never would 
forgive. 

Rhoda Marsh had become a_ good 
Christian in every respect but one. The 
male rake reformed is rather tolerant; 
but the female rake reformed is, as a 
rule, bitterly intolerant of female frailty ; 
and Rhoda carried this female character- 
istic to an extreme both in word and in 
deed. They were only half-sisters, after 
all; and Mary knew that she would be 
cast off forever if she deviated from vir- 
tue so far as to be found out. 

Besides the general warning, there had 
been a Special one. When she read 
Mary’s first letter from Huntercombe 
Hall Rhoda was rather taken aback at 
first ; but, on reflection, she wrote to 
Mary, saying she could stay there on two 
conditions: she must be discreet, and 
never mention her sister Rhoda in the 
house, and she must not be tempted to 
renew her acquaintance with Richard 
Bassett. ‘‘Mind,’’ said she, ‘“‘if ever you 
speak to that villain I shall hear of it, 
and I shall never notice you again.”’ 

This was the galling present and the 
dark future which had made so young 
and unsentimental a woman as Mary 
Wells think of suicide for a moment or 
two; and it now deprived her of her rest, 
and next day kept her thinking and 
brooding all the time her now leaden 
limbs were carrying her through her 
menial duties. 


The afternoon was sunny, and Sir 


TEMPTATION. v7 


Charles and Lady Bassett took their 
usual walk. 

Mary Wells went a little way with 
them, looking very miserable. Lady 
Bassett observed, and said, kindly, 
‘*Mary, you can give me that shawl; I 
will not keep you; go where you like till 
five o’clock.’’ 

Mary never said so much as ‘Thank 
you.’ She put the shawl round her mis- 
tress, and then went slowly back. She 
sat down on the stone steps, and glared 
stupidly at the scene, and felt very miser- 
able and leaden. She seemed to be stuck 
in a sort of slough of despond, and could 
not move in any direction to get out 
of it. 

While she sat in this somber reverie a 
gentleman walked up to the door, and 
Mary Wells lifted her head and looked at 
him. Notwithstanding her misery, her 
eyes rested on him with some admiration, 
for he was a model of a man: six feet 
high, and built like an athlete. His face 
was oval, and his skin dark but glowing ; 
his hair, eyebrows, and long eyelashes 
black as jet; his gray eyes large and ten- 
der. He was dressed in black, with a 
white tie, and his clothes were well cut, 
and seemed superlatively so, owing to the 
importance and symmetry of the figure 
they covered. It was the new vicar, Mr. 
Angelo. 

He smiled on Mary graciously, and 
asked her how Sir Charles was. 

She said he was better. 

Then Mr. Angelo asked, more timidly,, 
was Lady Bassett at home. 

‘‘She is just gone out, sir.”’ 

A look of deep disappointment crossed 
Mr. Angelo’s face. It did not escape 
Mary Wells. She looked at him full, and, 
lowering her voice a little, said, ‘‘ She is 
only in the grounds with Sir Charles. 
She will be at home about five o’clock.’’ 

Mr. Angelo hesitated, and then said he 
would call again at five. He evidently 
preferred a duet to a trio. He then 
thanked Mary Wells with more warmth 
than the occasion seemed to call for, and 
retired very slowly: he had come very 
quickly. 

Mary Wells looked after him, and asked 


78 


herself wildly if she could not make some 
use of him and his manifest infatuation. 

But before her mind could fix on any 
idea, and, indeed, before the young clergy- 
man had taken twenty steps homeward, 
loud voices were heard down the shrub- 
bery. 

These were followed by an agonized 
scream. 

Mary Wells started up, and the young 
parson turned: they looked at each other 
in amazement. 

Then came wild and piercing cries for 
help—in a woman’s voice. 

The young clergyman cried out, ‘‘ Her 
voice! her voice !’’ and dashed into the 
shrubbery with a speed Mary Wells had 
never seen equaled. He had woh the 200- 
yard race at Oxford in his day. 

The agonized screams were repeated, 
and Mary Wells screamed in response as 
she ran toward the place. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


Sir CHARLES BASSETT was in high 
spirits this afternoon—indeed, a little too 
high. 

‘Bella, my love,’’ said he, ‘now [ll 
tell you why I made you give me your 
signature this morning. ‘The money has 
all come in for the wood, and this very 
day I sent Oldfield instructions to open an 
account for you with a London banker.’’ 

Lady Bassett looked at him with tears 
of tenderness in her eyes. ‘‘ Dearest,”’ 
said she, ‘‘I have plenty of money; but 
the love to which I owe this present, that 
is my treasure of treasures. Well, I ac- 
cept it, Charles; but don’t ask me to 
spend it on myself; I should feel I was 
robbing you.”’ 

‘‘ It is nothing to me how you spend it ; 
I have saved it from the enemy.”’ 

Now that very enemy heard these 
words. He had looked from the ‘‘ Heir’s 
Tower,’’ and seen Sir Charles and Lady 


9 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


Bassett walking on their side the wall, 
and the nurse carrying his heir on the 
other side. 

He had come down to look at his child 
in the sun; but he walked softly, on the 
chance of overhearing Sir Charles and 
Lady Bassett say something or other - 
about his health; his design went no 
further than that, but the fate of listeners 
is proverbial. 

Lady Bassett endeavored to divert her 
husband from the topic he seemed to be 
approaching; it always excited him now, 
and did him harm. 

‘Do not waste your thoughts on that 
enemy. He is powerless.’’ 

‘““At this moment, perhaps; but his 
turn is sure to come again; and I shall 
provide for it. I mean to live on half my 
income, and settle the other half on you. 
I shall act on the clause in the entail, and 
sell all the timber on the estate, except 
about the home park and my best covers. 
It will take me some years to do this; I 
must not glut the market, and spoil your 
profits; but every year I’ll have a fall, 
till | have denuded Mr. Bassett’s inherit- 
ance, aS he calls it, and swelled your 
banker’s account to a Plum. Bella, I 
have had a shake. Even now that I 
am better such a pain goes through my 
head, like a bullet crushing through it, 
whenever I get excited. I don’t think I 
shall be a long-lived man. But never 
mind, I’ll live as long as I can; and, 
while I do live, 11 work for you, and 
against that villain.” 

‘‘Charles,’’ cried Lady Bassett, “I 
implore you to turn your thoughts away 
from that man, and to give up these idle 
schemes. Were you to die I should soon 
follow you; so pray do not shorten your 
life by these angry passions, or you will 
shorten mine.”’ 

This appeal acted powerfully on Sir 
Charles, and he left off suddenly with 
flushed cheeks and tried to compose 
himself. 

But his words had now raised a corre- 
sponding fury on the. other side of that 
boundary wall. Richard Bassett, stung 
with rage, and, unlike his high-bred 
cousin, accustomed to mix cunning even 


A TERRIBLE 


with his fury, gave him a terrible blow— 
a very coup de Jarnac. He spoke at 
him; he ran forward to the nurse, and 
said very loud: ‘‘ Let me see the little 
darling. He does youcredit. What fat 
cheeks !—what arms !—an infant hercu- 
les! There, take him up the mound. 
Now lift him in your arms, and let 
him see his inheritance. Higher, nurse, 
higher. Ay, crow away, youngster; all 
that is yours—house and land and all. 
They may steal the trees; they can’t 
make away with the broad acres. Ha! 
I believe he understands every word, 
nurse. See how he smiles and crows.” 

At the sound of Bassett’s voice Sir 
Charles started, and, at the first taunt, 
he uttered something between a moan 
and a roar, aS of a wounded lion. 

‘<‘Come away,’’ cried Lady Bassett. 
“He is doing it on purpose.” 

But the stabs came too fast. Sir 
Charles shook her off, and looked wild- 
ly round for a weapon to strike his 
insulter with. 

‘Curse him and his brat!” he cried. 
«They shall neither of them— I'll kill 
them both.”’ 

He sprang fiercely at the wall, and, 
notwithstanding his weakly condition, 
raised himself above it, and glared over 
with a face so full of fury that Richard 
Bassett recoiled in dismay for a moment, 
and said, ‘“‘“Run! run! He’ll hurt the 
child !”’ 

But, the next moment, Sir Charles’s 
hands lost their power; he uttered a 
miserable moan, and fell gasping under 
the wall in an epileptic fit, with all the 
terrible symptoms I have described in a 
previous portion of this story. These 
were new to his poor wife, and, as she 
strove in vain to control his fearful con- 
vulsions, her shrieks rent the air. In- 
deed, her screams were so appalling 
that Bassett himself sprang at the wall, 
and, by a great effort of strength, drew 
himself up, and peered down, with white 
face, at the glaring eyes, clinched teeth, 
purple face, and foaming lipsof his enemy, 
and his body that bounded convulsively 
on the ground with incredible violence. 

At that moment humanity prevailed 


TEMPTATION. 79 


over every thing, and he flung himself 
over the wall, and in his haste got rather 
a heavy fall himself. “It is a fit!’’ he 
cried, and, running to the brook close by, 
filled his hat with water, and was about 
to dash it over Sir Charles’s face. 

But Lady Bassett repelled him with 
horror. ‘Don’t touch him, you villain! 
You have killed him.’’ And then she 
shrieked again. 

At this moment Mr. Angelo dashed 
up, and saw at a glance what it was, for 
he had studied medicine a little. Hesaid, 
‘It is epilepsy. Leave him to me.” He 
managed, by his great strength, to keep 
the patient’s head down till the face got 
pale and the limbs still; then, telling 
Lady Bassett not to alarm herself too 
much, he lifted Sir Charles, and actually 
proceeded to carry him toward the house. 
Lady Bassett, weeping, proffered her 
assistance, and so did Mary Wells; but 
this athlete said, a little bruskly, ‘‘ No, 
no; I have practiced this sort of thing; ”’ 
and, partly by his rare strength, partly 
by his familiarity with all athletic feats, 
carried the insensible baronet to his own 
house, as I have seen my accomplished 
friend Mr. Henry Neville carry a tall 
actress on the mimic stage; only, the 
distance being much longer, the perspira- 
tion rolled down Mr. Angelo’s face with 
so sustained an effort. 

He laid him gently on the floor of his 
study, while Lady Bassett sent two 
grooms galloping for medical advice, 
and half a dozen servants running for 
this and that stimulant, as one thing 
after another occurred to her agitated 
mind. The very rustling of dresses and 
scurry of feet overhead told all the house 
a great calamity had stricken it. 

Lady Bassett hung over the sufferer, 
sighing piteously, and was for supporting 
his beloved head with her tender arm ; 
but Mr. Angelo told her it was better to 
keep the head low, that the blood might 
flow back to the vessels of the brain. 

She cast a look of melting gratitude 
on her adviser, and composed herself to 
apply stimulants under his direction and 
advice. 


Thus judiciously treated, Sir Charles 


80 
began to recover consciousness in part. | 
He stared and muttered incoherently. 


Lady Bassett thanked God on her knees, 
and then turned to Mr. Angelo with 
streaming eyes, and stretched out both 
hands to him, with an indescribable elo- 
quence of gratitude. He gave her his 
hands timidly, and she pressed them both 


with all her soul. Unconsciously she 
sent a rapturous thrill through the 
young man’s body: he blushed, and 


then turned pale, and felt for a moment 
almost faint with rapture at that sweet 
and unexpected pressure of her soft 
hands. 

But at this moment Sir Charles broke 
out in a sort of dry, business-like voice, 
‘© 71] kill the viper and his brood!’’ Then 
he stared at Mr. Angelo, and could not 
make him out at first. ‘‘Ah!”’ said he, 
complacently, ‘‘ this is my private tutor: 
a man of learning. I read Homer with 
him ; but I have forgotten it, all but one 
line— 


‘ pHmvos Os TaTépa KTELYwWY Taldas KaTaAEtTEL.” 


That’s a beautiful verse. Homer, old 
boy. I’ll take your advice. [’ll kill the 
heir at law, and his brat as well, and 
when they are dead and well seasoned I'll 
sell them to that old timber-merchant, 
the devil, to make hell hotter. Order my 
horse, somebody, this minute !”’ 

During this tirade Lady Bassett’s 
hands kept clutching, as if to stop it, 
and her eyes filled with horror. 

Mr. Angelo came again to her rescue. 
He affected to take it all as a matter of 
course, and told the servants they need 
not wait, Sir Charles was coming to 
himself by degrees, and the danger was 
all over. 

But when the servants were gone he 
said to Lady Rassett, seriously, ‘‘ I would 
not let any servant be about Sir Charles, 
except this one. She is evidently at- 
tached to you. Suppose we take him to 
his own room.”’ 

He then made Mary Wells a signal, 
and they carried him upstairs. 

Sir Charles talked all the while with 
pitiable vehemence. Indeed, it was a 
continuous babble, like a brook. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


Mary Wells was taking him into his 
own room, but Lady Bassett said, ‘‘No: 
into my room. Oh, I ‘= never let him 
out of my sight again.’ 

Then they carried him into nk Bas- 
sett’s bedroom, and laid him gently down 
on a couch there. 

He looked round, observed the locality, 
and uttered a little sigh of complacency. 
He left off talking for the present, and 
seemed to doze. 

The place which exerted this soothing 
influence on Sir Charles had a contrary 
and strange effect on Mr. Angelo. 

It was of palatial size, and lighted by 
two side windows, and an oriel window at 
the end. The delicate stone shafts and 
mullions were such as are oftener seen in 
cathedrals than in mansions. The deep 
embrasure was filled with beautiful 
flowers and luscious exotic leaf-plants 
from the hot-houses. The floor was of 
polished oak, and some feet of this were 
left bare on all sides of the great Aubus- 
son carpet made expressly for the room. 
By this means cleanliness penetrated into 
every corner: the oak was not only 
cleaned, but polished like a mirror. The 
curtains were French chintzes, of sub- 
stance, and exquisite patterns, and very 
voluminous. On the walls was a delicate 
rose-tinted satin paper, to which French 
art, unrivaled in these matters, had given 
the appearance of being stuffed, padded, 
and divided into a thousand cozy pillows, 
by gold-headed nails. 

The wardrobes were of satin-wood. 
The bedsteads, one small, one large, 
were plain white, and gold in modera- 
tion. 

All this, however, was but the frame 
to the delightful picture of a wealthy 
young lady’s nest. 

The things that startled and thrilled 
Mr. Angelo were those his imagination 
could see the fair mistress using. The 
exquisite toilet table; the Dresden mirror, 
with its delicate china frame muslined 
and ribboned; the great ivory-handled 
brushes, the array of cut-glass gold- 
mounted bottles, and all the artillery of 
beauty; the baths of various shapes and — 
sizes, in which she laved her fair body ; 


ReApg, Volume Eight. 


AT THIS MOMENT MR. ANGELO DASHED UP. 
—A Terrible Temptation, Chapter XVI. 


A TERRIBLE 


the bath sheets, and the profusion of 
linen, fine and coarse; the bed, with its 
frilled sheets, its hugh frilled pillows, and 
its eider-down quilt, covered with bright 
purple silk. 

A delicate perfume came through the 
wardrobes, where strata of fine linen 
from Hamburg and Belfast lay on 
scented herbs; and this, permeating the 
room, seemed the very perfume of Beauty 
itself, and intoxicated the brain. Imagi- 
nation conjured pictures proper to the 
scene: a goddess at her toilet; that 
glorious hair lying tumbled on the 
pillow, and burning in contrasted color 
with the snowy sheets and with the 
purple quilt. 

From this reverie he was awakened by 
a soft voice that said, ‘‘ How can I ever 
thank you enough, sir? ”’ 

Mr. Angelo controlled himself, and 
said, ‘‘By sending for me whenever I 
can be of the slightest use.’? Then, 
comprehending his danger, he added, 
hastily, ‘‘And I fear I am none what- 
ever now.’’ Then he rose to go. 

Lady Bassett gave him both her hands 
again, and this time he kissed one of 
them, allin a flurry; he could not resist 
the temptation. Then he hurried away, 
with his whole soulin a tumult. Lady 
Bassett blushed, and returned to her 
husband’s side. 

Doctor Willis came, heard the case, 
looked rather grave and puzzled, and 
wrote the inevitable prescription; for 
the established theory is that man is 
cured by drugs alone. 

Sir Charles wandered a little while 
the doctor was there, and continued to 
wander after he was gone. 

Then Mary Wells begged leave to 
sleep in the dressing-room. 

Lady Bassett thanked her, but said she 
thought it unnecessary ; a good night’s 
rest, she hoped, would make a great 
change in the sufferer. 

Mary Wells thought otherwise, and 
quietly brought her little bed into the 
dressing-room and laid it on the floor. 

Her judgment proved right ; Sir Charles 
was no better the next day, nor the day 
after. He brooded for hours at a time, 


TEMPTATION. 81 


and, when he talked, there was an inco- 
herence in his discourse; above all, he 
seemed incapable of talking long on any 
subject without coming back to the fatal 
one of his childlessness; and, when he 
did return to this, it was sure to make 
him either deeply dejected or else violent 
against Richard Bassett and his son; he 
swore at them, and said they were wait- 
ing for his shoes. 

Lady lBassett’s anxiety deepened ; 
strange fears came over her. She put 
subtle questions to the doctor; he re- 
turned obscure answers, and went on 
prescribing medicines that had no effect. 

She looked wistfully into Mary Wells’s 
face, and there she saw her own thoughts 
reflected. 

‘‘Mary,’’ said she, one day, in a low 
voice, ‘‘ what do they say in the kitchen ?”’ 

“Some say one thing, some another. 
What can they say? They never see 
him, and never shall while I am here.’’ 

This reminded Lady Bassett that Mary’s 
time was up. The idea of a stranger tak- 
ing her place, and seeing Sir Charles in 
his present condition, was horrible to her. 
“Oh, Mary,’’ said she, piteously, ‘‘ sure- 
ly you will not leave me just now ? ”’ 

** Do you wish me to stay, my lady ?”’ 

“Can you ask it? How can I hope to 
find such devotion as yours, such fidelity, 
and, above all, such secrecy ? Ah, Mary, 
I am the most unhappy lady in all En- 
gland this day.”’ 

Then she began to cry bitterly, and 
Mary Wells cried with her, and said she 
would stay as long as she could; ‘“ but, 
said she, ‘“‘I gave you good advice, my 
lady, and so you will find.”’ 

Lady Bassett made no answer what- 
ever, and that disappointed Mary, for she 
wanted a discussion. 


> 


The days rolled on, and brought no 
change for the better. Sir Charles con- 
tinued to brood on his one misfortune. 
He refused to go out-of-doors, even into 
the garden, giving as his reason that he 
was not fit to be’seen. ‘‘I don’t mind a 
couple of women,” said he, gravely, ‘‘ but 
no man shall see Charles Bassett in his 
present state. No. Patience! Patience! 


82 WORKS 
I’ll wait till Heaven takes pity on me. 
After all, it would be a shame that such 
a race aS mine should die out, and these 
fine estates go to blackguards, and poach- 
ers, and anonymous-letter writers.’’ 

Lady Bassett used to coax him to walk 
in the corridor; but, even then, he or- 
dered Mary Wells to keep watch and let 
none of the servants come that way. 
From words he let fall it seems he 
thought ‘‘ Childlessness ”’ was written on 
his face, and that it had somehow de- 
graded his features. 

Now a wealthy and popular baronet 
could not thus immure himself for any 
length of time without exciting curiosity, 
and setting all manner of rumors afloat. 
Visitors poured into Huntercombe to in- 
quire. 

Lady Bassett excused herself to many, 
but some of her own sex she thought it 
best to encounter. This subjected her to 
the insidious attacks of curiosity admir- 
ably veiled with sympathy. The assail- 
ants were marvelously subtle; but so 
was the devoted wife. She gave kiss for 
kiss, and equivoque for equivoque. She 
seemed grateful for each visit; but they 
got nothing out of her except that Sir 
Charles’s nerves were shaken by his fall, 
and that she was plaving the tyrant for 
once, and insisting on absolute quiet for 
her patient. 

One visitor she never refused—Mr. An- 
gelo. He, from the first, had been her 
true friend ; had carried Sir Charles away 
from the enemy, and then had dismissed 
the gaping servants. She saw that he 
had divined her calamity, and she knew 
from things he said to her that he would 
never breathe a word out-of-doors. She 
confided in him. She told him Mr. Bas- 
sett was the real cause of all this misery : 
he had insulted Sir Charles. The nature 
of this insult she suppressed. ‘‘ And oh, 
Mr. Angelo,’’ said she, ‘‘ that man is my 
terror night and day! I don’t know 
what he can do, but I feel he will do 
something if he ever learns my poor hus- 
band’s condition.’’ 

“‘T trust, Lady Bassett, you are con- 
vinced he will learn nothing from me. 
Indeed, I will tell the ruffian anything 


OF CHARLES READE. 


you like. He has been sounding me a lit- 
tle ; called to inquire after his poor cousin 
—the hypocrite! ”’ 

‘“How good you are! Please tell him 
absolute repose is prescribed for a time, 
but there is no doubt of Sir Charles’s ulti- 
mate recovery.”’ 

Mr. Angelo promised heartily. 

Mary Wells was not enough ; a woman 
must have a man to lean on in trouble, 
and Lady Bassett leaned on Mr. Angelo. 
She even obeyed him. One day he told 
her that her own health would fail if she 
sat always in the sick-room; she must 
walk an hour every day. 

‘*¢ Must I?’’ said she, sweetly. 

“Yes, even if it is only in your own 
garden.”’ 

From that time she used to walk with 
him nearly every day. 

Richard Bassett saw this from his 


tower of observation; saw it, and 
chuckled. ‘‘Aha!’’ said he. ‘*‘ Husband 
sick in bed. Wife walking in the garden 


with a young man—a parson, too. He is 
dark, she is fair. Something will come of 
thisy( ihat Tuas 

Lady Bassett now talked of sending to 
London for advice; but Mary Wells dis- 
suaded her. ‘‘ Physic can’t cure him. 
There’s only one can cure him, and that 
is yourself, my lady.”’ 

“* Ah, would to Heaven I could! ”’ 

“Try my way, and you will\see, my 
lady.’’ 

«What, that way! Oh, no, no!”’ 

‘¢ Well, then, if you won’t, nobody else 
can.” | 

Such speeches as these, often repeated, 
on the one hand, and Sir Charles’s melan- 
choly on the other, drove Lady Bassett 
almost wild with distress and perplexity. 

Meanwhile her vague fears of Richard 
Bassett were being gradually realized. 

Bassett employed Wheeler to sound 
Dr. Willis as to his patient’s condition. 

Dr. Willis, true to the honorable tradi- 
tions of his profession, would tell him 
nothing. But Dr. Willis had a wife. 
She pumped him: and Wheeler pumped 
her. 

By this channel Wheeler got a some- 
at exaggerated account of Sir 


A THRRIBLE 


Charles’s state. He carried it to Bas- 
sett, and the pair put their heads to- 
gether. 

The consultation lasted all night, and 
finally a comprehensive plan of action 
was settled. Wheeler stipulated that 
the law should not be broken in the 
smallest particular, but only stretched. 

Four days after this conference Mr. 
Bassett, Mr. Wheeler, and two spruce 
gentlemen dressed in black, sat upon the 
‘* Heir’s Tower,’’ watching Huntercombe 
Hall. 

They watched, and watched, until they 
saw Mr. Angelo make his usual daily 
call. 

Then they watched, and watched, until 
Lady Bassett and the young clergyman 
came out and strolled together into the 
shrubbery. 

Then the two gentlemen went down the 
stairs, and were hastily conducted by Bas- 
sett to Huntercombe Hall. 

They rang the bell, and the taller said, 
in a business-like voice, ‘‘ Dr. Mosely, 
from Dr. Willis.”’ 

Mary Wells was sent for, and Dr. 
Mosely said, ‘‘Dr. Willis is unable to 
come to-day, and has sent me.’’ 

Mary Wells conducted him to the pa- 
tient. The other gentleman followed. 

‘““Who is this?”’ said Mary. ‘‘I can’t 
let all the world in to see him.”’ 

“Tt is Mr. Donkyn, the surgeon. Dr. 
Willis wished the patient to be examined 
with the stethoscope. You can stay out- 
side, Mr. Donkyn.”’ 

This new doctor announced himself to 
Sir Charles, felt his pulse, and entered 
at once into conversation with him. 

Sir Charles was in a talking mood, and 
very soon said one or two inconsecutive 
things. Dr. Mosely looked at Mary Wells 
and said he would write a prescription. 

As soon as he had written it he said, 
very loud, ‘“‘ Mr. Donkyn!”’ 

The door instantly opened, and that 
worthy appeared on the threshold. 

*‘Oblige me,’’ said the doctor to his 
confrére, “‘by seeing this prescription 
made up; and you can examine the pa- 
tient yourself; but do not fatigue him.”’ 

With this he retired swiftly, and strolled 


TEMPTATION. 83 
down the corridor, to wait for his com- 
panion. 

He had not to wait long. Mr. Donkyn 
adopted a free and easy style with Sir 
Charles, and that gentleman marked his 
sense of the indignity by turning him out 
of the room, and kicking him industri- 
ously half-way down the passage. 

Messrs. Mosely and Donkyn retired to 
Highmore. 

Bassett was particularly pleased at the 
baronet having kicked Donkyn; so was 
Wheeler; so was Dr. Mosely. Donkyn 
alone did not share the general enthu- 
siasm., 

When Sir Charles had disposed of Mr. 
Donkyn he turned on Mary Wells, and 
rated her soundly for bringing strangers 
into his room to gratify their curiosity ; 
and when Lady Bassett came in he made 
his formal complaint, concluding with a 
proposal that one of two persons should 
leave Huntercombe, forever, that after- 
noon—Mary Wells or Sir Charles Bassett. 

Mary replied, not to him, but to her 
mistress, ‘‘ He came from Dr. Willis, my 
lady. It was Dr. Mosely; and the other 
gent was a surgeon.’’ 

‘Two medical men, sent by Dr. Wil- 
lis?’’? said Lady Bassett, knitting her 
brow with wonder and a shade of doubt. 

‘* A couple of her own sweethearts, sent 
by herself,’’ suggested Sir Charles. 

Lady Bassett sat down and wrote a 
hasty letter to Dr. Willis. ‘‘Send a 
groom with it, as fast as he can ride,’’ 
said she; and she was much discomposed 
and nervous and impatient till the answer 
came back. 

Dr. Willis came in person. ‘‘I sent no 
one to take my place,”’ said he. ‘I es- 
teem my patient too highly to let any 
stranger prescribe for him or even see 
him—for a few days to come.”’ 

Lady Bassett sank into a chair, and 
her eloquent face filled with an unde- 
finable terror. 

Mary Wells, being on her defense, put 
in her word. ‘‘I am sure he was a doc- 
tor; for he wrote a prescription, and 
here ’tis.”’ 

Dr. Willis examined the prescription, 
with no friendly eye. 


84 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


‘« Acetate of morphia! The very worst 
thing that could be given him. This is 
the favorite of the specialists. This fatal 
drug has eaten away a thousand brains 
for one it has ever benefited.’’ 

Ah!” said Lady Bassett. 
ists !’ what are they ?”’ 

‘* Medical men, who confine their prac- 
tice to one disease.”’ 

‘* Mad-doctors, he means,’’ said the pa- 
tient, very gravely. 

Lady Bassett turned very pale. 
those were mad-doctors.”’ 

‘“Never you mind, Bella,’’ said Sir 
Charles. ‘I kicked the fellow hand- 
somely.’’ 

‘‘T am sorry to hear it, Sir Charles.”’ 

mawWihy 77 

Dr. Willis looked at Lady Bassett, as 
much as to say, ‘‘I shall not give him 
my real reason;’’ and then said, ‘I 
think it very undesirable you should be 
excited and provoked, until your health 
is thoroughly restored.’’ 

Dr. Willis wrote a prescription, and 
retired. 

Lady Bassett sank into a chair, and 
trembled all over. Her divining fit was 
on her; she saw the hand of the emeny, 
and filled with vague fears. 

Mary Wells tried to comfort her. “ VU 
take care no more strangers get in here,”’ 
said she. “And, my lady, if you are 
afraid, why not have the keepers, and 
two or three more, to sleep in the house ? 
for, as for them footmen, they be too soft 
to fight.’’ 

“IT will,’’? said Lady Bassett; ‘‘but I 
fear it will be no use. Our enemy has so 
many resources unknown to me. How 
can a poor woman fight with a shadow, 
that comes ina moment and strikes ; and 
then is gone and leaves his victim trem- 
bling ? ”’ 

Then she slipped into the dressing- 
room and became hysterical, out of her 
husband’s sight and hearing. 

Mary Wells nursed her, and, when 
she was better, whispered in her ear, 
‘‘Lose no more time, then. Cure him. 
You know the way.”’ 


“* « Special- 


«Then 


CHAPTER XVII; 


In the present condition of her mind 
these words produced a strange effect on 
Lady Bassett. She quivered, and her 
eyes began to rove in that peculiar way 
I have already noticed; and then she 
started up and walked wildly to and fro; 
and then she kneeled down and prayed ; 
and then, alarmed, perplexed, exhausted, 
she went and leaned her head on her 
patient’s shoulder, and wept softly a 
long time. 

Some days passed, and no more stran- 
gers attempted to see Sir Charles. 

Lady Bassett was beginning to breathe 
again, when she was afflicted by an un- 
welcome discovery. 

Mary Wells fainted away so suddenly 
that, but for Lady Bassett’s quick eye 
and ready hand, she would have fallen 
heavily. 

Lady Bassett laid her head down and 
loosened her stays, and discovered her 
condition. She said nothing till the 
young woman was well, and then she 
taxed her with it. 

Mary denied it plump; but, seeing her 
mistress’s disgust at the falsehood, she 
owned it with many tears. 

Being asked how she could so far forget 
herself, she told Lady Bassett she had 
long been courted by a respectable young 
man; he had come to the village, bound 
on a three years’ voyage, to bid her 
good-by, and, what with love and grief 
at parting, they had been betrayed into 
folly; and now he was on the salt seas, 
little dreaming in what condition he had 
left her: ‘‘and,’’ said she, “ before ever 
he can write to me, and I to him, I shall 
be a ruined girl; that is why I wanted 
to put an end to myself; I will, too, 
unless I can find some way to hide it 
from the world.’’ 

Lady Bassett begged her to give up 
those desperate thoughts; she would 
think what could be done for her. Lady 
Bassett could say no more to her just 
then, for she was disgusted with her. 

But when she came to reflect that, after 
all, this was not a lady, and that she 
appeared by her own account to be the 


A TERRIBLE 


victim of affection and frailty rather than 
of vice, she made some excuses ; and then 
the girl had laid aside her trouble, her 
despair, and given her sorrowful mind to 
nursing and comforting Sir Charles. This 
would have outweighed a crime, and it 
made the wife’s bowels yearn over the 
unfortunate girl. ‘‘Mary,’’ said she, 
‘others must judge you; I am a wife, 
and can only see your fidelity to my poor 
husband. I don’t know what I shall do 
without you, but I think it is my duty to 
send you to him if possible. You are 
sure he really loves you ?”’ 

““Me cross the seas after a young 
man?’ said Mary Wells. ‘‘1’d as lieve 
hang myself on the nighest tree and 
make an end. No, my lady, if you are 
really my friend, let me stay here as long 
as I can—I will never go downstairs to 
be seen—and then give me money enough 


to get my trouble over unbeknown to my 


sister; she is all my fear. She is mar- 
ried to a gentleman, and got plenty of 
money, and | shall never want while she 
lives, and behave myself; but she would 
never forgive me if she knew. She is a 
hard woman; she is not like you, my 
lady. Id liever cut my hand off than I’d 
trust her as I would you.”’ 

Lady Bassett was not quite insensible 
to this compliment ; but she felt uneasy. 

“What, help you to deceive your sis- 
ter ? ’”’ 

‘‘Wor her good. Why, if any one was 
to go and tell her about me now, she’d 
hate them for telling her almost as much 
as she would hate me.”’ 

Lady Bassett was sore perplexed. Un- 
able to see quite clear in the matter, she 
naturally reverted to her husband and 
his interest. That dictated her course. 
She said, ‘‘ Well, stay with us, Mary, as 
long aS you can; and then money shall 
not be wanting to hide your shame from 
all the world; but I hope when the time 
comes you will alter your mind and tell 
your sister. May ILask what her name 
Sie SG 

Mary, after a moment’s hesitation, said 
her name was Marsh. 

“YT know a Mrs. Marsh,’’ said Lady 
Bassett; ‘‘but, of course, that is not 


TEHMPTATION. 85 


your sister. My Mrs. Marsh is rather 
faire? 

‘‘So is my sister, for that matter.’’ 

** And tall ? ” 

“Yes; but you never saw her. You’d 
never forget her if you had. She has got 
eyes like a lion.”’ 

‘*Ah! Does she ride? ”’ 

‘Oh, she is famous for that; 
driving, and all.’’ 

‘Indeed! But no; 
blance.”’ 

‘*Oh, she is only my half-sister.”’ 

‘«This is very strange.”’ 

Lady Bassett put her hand to her brow, 
and thought. 

‘‘Mary,’’ said she, “all this is very 
mysterious. We are wading in deep 
waters.”’ 

Mary Wells had no idea 
meant. 

The day was not over yet. Just be- 
fore dinner-time a fly from the station 
drove to the door, and Mr. Oldfield got 
out. 

He was detained in the hall by sentinel 
Moss. 

Lady Bassett came down to him. At 
the very sight of him she trembled, and 
Said, **hichard ‘Bassett? 

“ Yes,’’ said Mr. Oldfield, ‘‘ he is in the 
field again. He has been to the Court of 
Chancery ex parte, and obtained an in- 
junction ad wnterim to stay waste. Not 
another tree must be cut down on the es- 
tate for the present.”’ 

‘‘“Thank Heaven it is no worse than 
that. Not another tree shall be felled on 
the grounds.’’ 

“Of course not. But they will not 
stop there. If we do not move to dis- 
solve the injunction, I fear they will go 
on and ask the Court to administer the 
estate, with a view to all interests con- 
cerned, especially those of the heir at law 
and his son.’’ 

‘‘ What, while my husband lives ?.”’ 


and 


I see no resem- 


what she 


‘If they can prove him dead in 
law.”’ 

“T don’t understand ‘you, Mr. Old- 
field.’’ 


“They have got affidavits of two medi- 
cal men that he is insane.”’ 


86 WORKS 


Lady Bassett uttered a faint scream, 
and put her hand to her heart. 

‘¢ And, of course, they will use that 
extraordinary fall of timber as a further 
proof, and also as a reason why the Court 
should interfere to protect the heir at 
law. Their case is well got up and very 
strong,’’ said Mr. Oldfield, regretfully. 

‘‘ Well, but you are a lawyer, and you 
have always beaten them hitherto.”’ 

‘“‘T had law and fact on my side. It 
is not so now. To be frank, Lady Bas- 
sett, I don’t see what I can do but watch 
the case, on the chance of some error or 
illegality. It is very hard to fight a case 
when you cannot put your client forward 
—and I suppose that would not be safe. 
How unfortunate that you have no chil- 
dren !’’ 

‘Children! How could they help us? ”’ 

«What a question! How could Rich- 
ard Bassett move the Court if he was 
not the heir at law?”’ 

After a long conference Mr. Oldfield 
returned to town to see what he could do 
in the way of procrastination, and Lady 
Bassett promised to leave no stone un- 
turned to cure Sir Charles in the mean- 
time. Mr. Oldfield was to write imme- 
diately if any fresh step was taken. 

When Mr. Oldfield was gone, Lady 
Bassett pondered every word he had 
said, and, mild as she was, her rage 
began to rise against her husband’s re- 
lentless enemy. Her wits worked, her 
eyes roved in that peculiar half-savage 
way I have described. She became 
intolerably restless; and any one ac- 
quainted with her sex might see that 
some strange conflict was going on in 
her troubled mind. 

Every now and then she would come 
and cling to her husband, and cry over 
him; and that seemed to still the tumult 
of her soul a little. 

She never slept all that night; and 
next day, clinging in her helpless agony 
to the nearest branch, she told Mary 
Wells what Bassett was doing, and 
said, “* What shalimeoedor: :Helish not 
mad; but he is in so very precarious a 
state that, if they get at him to torment 
him, they will drive him mad indeed.’’ 


OF CHARLES READE. 


‘* My lady,’’ said Mary Wells, “I can’t 
go frommy word. *Tis no use in making 
two bites of acherry. We must cure him: 
and if we don’t, you’ll never rue it but 
once, and that will be all your life.’’ 

“‘T should look on myself with horror 
afterward were I to deceive him now.”’ 

‘“No, my lady, you are too fond of him 
for that. Once you saw him happy you’d 
be happy too, no matter how it came 
about. That Richard Bassett will turn 
him out of this else. Iam sure he will; 
he is a hard-hearted villain.”’ 

Lady Bassett’s eyes flashed fire; then 
her eyes roved ; then she sighed deeply. 

Her powers of resistance were begin- 
ning to relax. As for Mary Wells, she 


gave her no peace; she kept instilling, 


her mind into her mistress’s with the 
pertinacity of a small but ever-dripping 
fount, and we know both by science and 
poetry that small, incessant drops of 
water will wear a hole in marble. 


‘*Gutta cavat lapidem non vi sed spe cadendo.” 


And in the midst of all a letter came 
from Mr. Oldfield, to tell her that Mr. 
Bassett threatened to take out a commis- 
sion de lunatico, and she must prepare 
Sir Charles for an examination; for, if 
reported insane, the Court would admin- 
ister the estates; but the heir at law, 
Mr. Bassett, would have the ear of the 
Court and the right of application, and 
become virtually master of Huntercombe 
and Bassett; and, perhaps, considering 
the spirit by which he was animated, 
would contrive to occupy the very Hall 
itself. Lady Bassett was in the dressing- 
room when she received this blow, and it 
drove her almost frantic. She bemoaned 
her husband; she prayed God to take 
them both, and let their enemy have his 
will. She wept and raved, and at the 
height of her distress came from the 
other room a feeble cry, ‘* Childless ! 
childless! childless ! ”’ 

Lady Bassett heard that, and in one 
moment, from violent she became un- 
naturally and dangerously calm. She 
said firmly to Mary Wells, “This is 
more than I can bear. You pretend 
you can save him—do it.’’ 


; 
| 


A THRRIBLE 


Mary Wells now trembled in her turn ; 
but she seized the opportunity. 

‘‘My lady, whatever I say you'll stand 
to?’ 

‘«¢ Whatever you say I'll stand to.”’ 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


Mary WELLS, like other uneducated 
women, was not accustomed to think long 
and earnestly on any one subject ; to use 
an expression she once applied with far 
less justice to her sister, her mind was 
like running water. 

But gestation affects the brains of such 
women, and makes them think more 
steadily, and sometimes very acutely ; 
added to which, the peculiar dangers 
and difficulties that beset this girl during 
that anxious period stimulated her wits 
to the very utmost. Often she sat quite 
still for hours at a time, brooding and 
brooding, and asking herself how she 
could turn each new and unexpected event 
to her own benefit. Now so much does 
mental force depend on that exercise of 
keen and long attention, in which her sex 
is generally deficient, that this young 
woman’s powers were more than doubled 
since the day she first discovered her con- 
dition, and began to work her brains 
night and day for her defense. 

Gradually, as events I have related 
unfolded themselves, she caught a glimpse 
of this idea, that if she could get her mis- 
tress to have a secret, her mistress would 
help her to keep her own. Hence her in- 
Sidious whispers, and her constant praises 
of Mr. Angelo, who, she saw, was infatu- 
ated with Lady Bassett. Yet the de- 
signing creature was actually fond of her 
mistress; and so strangely compounded 
is a heart of this low kind that the ex- 
traordinary step she now took was half 
affectionate impulse, half egotistical de- 
sign. 

She made a motion with her hand in- 


TEMPTATION. 8? 
viting Lady Bassett to listen, and stepped 
into Sir Charles’s room. 

*“ Childless! childless! childless ! ”’ 

‘¢ Hush, sir,’’ said Mary Wells. “ Don’t 
say so. We shan’t be many months 
without one, please Heaven.” 

Sir Charles shook his head sadly. 

“Don’t you believe me? ”’ 

** Nov’ 

‘What, did ever I tell you a lie? ”’ 

‘No: but you are mistaken. She 
would have told me.”’ 

‘“ Well, sir, my iady is young and shy, 
and | think she is afraid of disappointing 
you after all; for you know, sir, there’s 
many a slip *twixt the cup and the lip. 
But ’tis as I tell you, sir.”’ 

Sir Charles was much agitated, and 
said he would give her a hundred guineas 
ifthat was true. ‘‘ Where is my darling 
wife? Why do I hear this through a 
servant ?”’ 

Mary Wells cast a look at the door, 
and said, for Lady Bassett to hear, ‘‘She 
is receiving company. Now, sir, I have 
told you good news; will you do some- 
thing to oblige me? You shouldn’t speak 
of it direct to my lady just yet; and if 
you want all to go well, you mustn’t vex 
my lady as you are doing now. What I 
mean, you mustn’t be so downhearted— 
there’s no reason for’t—and you mustn’t 
coop yourself up on this floor: it sets the 
folks talking, and worries my lady. You 
Should give her every chance, being the 
way she is.”’ 

Sir Charles said eagerly he would not 
vex her for the world. ‘‘ I’ll walk in the 
garden,’’ said he; “‘but as for going 
abroad, you know | am not in a fit con- 
dition yet ; my mind is clouded.”’ 

‘Not as I see.”’ 

“Oh, not alwavs. But sometimes a 
cloud seems to get into my head; and 
if 1 was in public I might do or say some- 
thing discreditable. I would rather die.”’ 

La, sir!’ said Mary Wells, .in’-a 
broad, hearty way — ‘“‘a cloud in your 
head! You’ve had a bad fall, and a fit 
at top on’t, and no wonder your poor 
head do ache at times. You'll outgrow 
that—if you take the air and give over 
fretting about the t’other thing. I tell 


88 WORKS OF CHARLES 


you you’ll hear the music of a child’s 
voice and little feet a-pattering up and 
down this here corridor before so very 
long—if so be you take my advice, and 
leave off fretting my lady with fretting 
of yourself. You should consider: she is 
too fond of you to be well when you be 
he 

‘© T’ll get well for her sake,’ 
Charles, firmly. 

At this moment there was a knock at 
the door. Mary Wells opened it so that 
the servant could see nothing. 

“Mr. Angelo has called.”’ 

‘My lady will be down directly.”’ 

Mary Wells then slipped into the dress- 
ing-room, and found Lady Bassett look- 
ing pale and wild. She had heard every 
word. 

“<“There, he is better already,’’ said 
Mary Wells. ‘‘ He shall walk in the gar- 
den with you this afternoon.’’ 

«What have you done? Ican’t look 
him in the face now. Suppose he speaks 
to me?” 

‘“‘Hewill not. Vll manage that. You 
won’t have to say aword. Only listen to 
what J say, and don’t make a liar of me. 
He is better already.”’ 

‘‘ How will this end ?’’ cried Lady Bas- 
sett, helplessly. ‘‘ What shall Ido?” 

“You must go downstairs, and not 
come here for an hour at least, or you’ll 
spoil my work. Mr. Angelo is in the 
drawing-room.’’ 

‘<7 will go to him.’’ 

Lady Bassett slipped out by the other 
door, and it was three hours, instead of 
one, before she returned. 

For the first time in her life she was 
afraid to face her husband. 


b) 


said Sir 


2 


CHAPTER XIX. 


MEANTIME Mary Wells had a long con- 
versation with her master; and after 
that she retired into the adjoining room, 


READE. 


and sat down to sew baby-linen clandes- 
tinely. 

After a considerable time Lady Bassett 
came in, and, sinking into a chair, coy- 
ered her face with her hands. She had 
her bonnet on. 

Mary Wells looked at her with black 
eyes that flashed triumph. 

After so surveying her for some time 
she said: ‘‘I have been at him again, 
and there’s a change for the better al- 
ready. He is not the same man. You 
go and see else.”’ 

Lady Bassett now obeyed her servant: 
she rose and crept like a culprit into Sir 
Charles’s room. She found him clean 
shaved, dressed to perfection, and look- 
ing more cheerful than she had seen him 
for many along day. ‘‘ Ah, Bella,’’ said 
he, ‘‘you have your bonnet on; let us 
have a walk in the garden.’’ 

Lady Bassett opened her eyes and con- 
sented eagerly, though she was very 
tired. 

They walked together ; and Sir Charles, 
being a man that never broke his word, 
put no direct question to Lady Bassett, 
but spoke cheerfully of the future, and 
told her she was his hope and his all; she 
would baffle his enemy, and cheer his 
desolate hearth. 

She blushed, and looked confused and 
distressed ; then he smiled, and talked of 
indifferent matters, until a pain in his 
head stopped him; then he became con- 
fused, and, putting his hand piteously to 
his head, proposed to retire at once to his 
own room. 

Lady Bassett brought him in, and he 
reposed in silence on the sofa. 

The next day, and, indeed, many days 
afterward, presented similar features. 

Mary Wells talked to her master of the 
bright days to come, of the joy that 
would fill the house if all went well, and 
of the defeat in store for Richard Bassett. 
She spoke of this man with strange viru- 
lence ; said ‘‘she would think no more of 
sticking a knife into him than of eating 
her dinner;’’ and in saying this she 
showed the white of her eye in a manner 
truly savage and vindictive. 

To hurt the same person is a surer bond 


A TERRIBLE 


than to love the same person; and this 
sentiment of Mary Wells, coupled with 
her uniform kindness to himself, gave her 
great influence with Sir Charles in his 
present weakened condition. Moreover, 
the young woman had an oily, persuasive 
tongue; and she who persuades us is 
stronger than he who convinces us. 

Thus influenced, Sir Charles walked 
every day in the garden with his wife, 
and forbore all direct allusion to her 
condition, though his conversation was 
redolent of it. 

He was still subject to sudden collapses 
of the intellect ; but he became conscious 
when they were coming on; and at the 
first warning he would insist on burying 
himself in his room. 

After some days he consented to take 
short drives with Lady Bassett in the 
open carriage. ‘This made her very joy- 
ful. Sir Charles refused to enter a single 
house, so high was his pride and so great 
his terror lest he should expose himself ; 
but it was a great point gained that she 
could take him about the county, and 
show him in the character of a mere in- 
valid. 

Every thing now looked like a cure, 
slow, perhaps, but progressive ; and Lady 
Bassett had her joyful hours, yet not 
without a bitter alloy: her divining mind 
asked itself what she should say and do 
when Sir Charles should be quite re- 
covered. This thought tormented her, 
and sometimes so goaded her that she 
hated Mary Wells for her well-meant in- 
terference, and, by a natural recoil from 
the familiarity circumstances had forced 
on her, treated that young woman with 
great coldness and hauteur. 

The artful girl met this with extreme 
meekness and servility; the only reply 
she ever hazarded was an adroit one; she 
would take this opportunity to say, ‘‘ How 
much better master do get ever since 
I took in hand to cure him !”’ 

This oblique retort seldom failed. Lady 
Bassett would look at her husband, and 
her face would clear; and she would 
generally end by giving Mary a collar, or 
a scarf, or something. 

Thus did circumstances enable the lower 


TEMPTATION. 89 
nature to play with the higher. Lady 
Bassett’s struggles were like those of a 
bird in a silken net; they led to nothing. 
When it came to the point she could 
neither do nor say any thing to retard 
his cure. Any day the Court of Chancery, 
set in motion by Richard Bassett, might 
issue a commission de lunatico, and, if 
Sir Charles was not cured by that time, 
Richard Bassett would virtually adminis- 
ter the estate—so Mr. Oldfield had told 
her—and that, she felt sure, would drive 
Sir Charles mad for life. 

So there wasno help forit. She feared, 
she writhed, she hated herself; but Sir 
Charles got better daily, and so she let 
herself drift along. 

Mary Wells made it fatally easy to her. 
She was the agent. Lady Bassett was 
silent and passive. 

After all she had a hope of extrication. 
Sir Charles once cured, she would make 
him travel Europe with her. Money 
would relieve her of Mary Wells, and dis- 
tance cut all the other cords. 

And, indeed, a time came when she 
looked back on her present situation with 
wonder at the distress it had caused her. 
‘¢] was in shallow water then,’’ said she 
—‘*but now!” 


CHAPTER XX. 


SIR CHARLES observed that he was 
never trusted alone. He remarked this, 
and inquired, with a peculiar eye, why 
that was. 

Lady Bassett had the tact to put on an 


innocent look and smile, and say: ‘* That 
is true, dearest. I have tied you to my 
apron-string without mercy. But it 


serves you right for having fits and 
frightening me. You get well, and my 
tyranny will cease at once.”’ 

However, after this she often left him 
alone in the garden, to remove from his 
mind the notion that he was under re- 
straint from her. 


90 


Mr. Bassett observed this proceeding 
from his tower. 

One day Mr. Angelo called, and Lady 
Bassett left Sir Charles in the garden, to 
go and speak to him. 

She had not been gone many minutes 
when a boy ran to Sir Charles, and said, 
‘‘Oh, sir, please come to the gate; the 
lady has had a fall, and hurt herself.”’ 

Sir Charles, much alarmed, followed 
the boy, who took him to a side gate 
opening on the high-road. Sir Charles 
rushed through this, and was passing 
between two stout fellows. that stood one 
on each side the gate, when they seized 
him, and lifted him in a moment into a 
close carriage that was waiting on the 
spot. He struggled, and cried loudly for 
assistance; but they bundled him in and 
sprang in after him; a third man closed 
the door, and got up by the side of the 
coachman. He drove off, avoiding the 
village, soon got upon a broad road. and 
bowled along at a great rate, the car- 
riage being light, and drawn by two 
powerful horses. 

So cleverly and rapidly was it done 
that, but for a woman’s quick ear, the 
deed might not have been discovered 
for hours; but Mary Wells heard the cry 
for help through an open window, recog- 
nized Sir Charles’s voice, and ran scream- 
ing downstairs to Lady Bassett: she ran 
wildly out, with Mr. Angelo, to look for 
Sir Charles. He was nowhere to be 
found. Then she ordered every horse 
in the stables to be saddled; and she 
ran with Mary to the place where the 
cry had been heard. 

Hor some time no intelligence whatever 
could be gleaned; but at last an old man 
was found who said he had heard some- 
body cry out, and soon after that a car- 
riage had come tearing by him, and gone 
round the corner: but this direction was 
of little value, on account of the many 
- roads, any one of which it might have 
taken. 

However, it left no doubt that Sir 
Charles had been taken away from the 
place by force. 

Terror-stricken, and pale as death, 
Lady Bassett never lost her head for a 


WORKS OF CHARLES 


READE. 


moment. Indeed, she showed unexpected 
fire; she sent off coachman and grooms 
to scour the country, and rouse the 
gentry to help her; she gave them 
money, and told them not to come back 
till they had found Sir Charles. 

Mr. Angelo said, eagerly, “I'll go to 
the nearest magistrate, and we will ar- 
rest Richard Bassett on suspicion.”’ 

‘*God bless you, dear friend !’’ sobbed 
Lady Bassett. ‘ Oh, yes, it is his doing 
—murderer !”’ 

Off went Mr. Angelo on his errand. 

He was hardly gone when a man was 
seen running and shouting across the 
fields. Lady Bassett went to meet him, 
surrounded by her humble sympathizers. 
It was young Drake: he came up pant- 
ing, with a double-barreled gun in his 
hand (for he was allowed to shoot rabbits 
on his own little farm), and stammered 
out, ‘Oh, my lady—Sir Charles—they 
have carried him off against his will!’ 

“Who? Where? Did you see him?” 

‘“‘Ay, and heerd him and all. I was 
ferreting rabbits by the side of the turn- 
pike-road yonder, and a carriage came 
tearing along, and Sir Charles put out 
his head and cried to me, ‘ Drake, they 
are kidnapping me. Shoot!’ But they 
pulled him back out of sight.’ 

“Oh, my poor husband! And did you 
let them? Oh!” 

““Couldn’t catch ’em, my lady: so I 
did as I was bid; got to my gun as quick 
as ever I could, and gave the coachman 
both barrels hot.’’ 

« What, kill him ? ”’ 

‘‘Lord, no; ’twas sixty yards off; but 
made him holler and squeak a good un. 
Put thirty or forty shots into his back, I 
know.”’ 

‘““Give me your hand, Mr. Drake. 
never forget that shot.”’ 
to cry. 

‘‘Doant ye, my lady, doant ye,’’ said 
the honest fellow, and was within an ace 
of blubbering for sympathy. ‘‘ We ain’t 
a lot o’ babies, to see our squire kid- 
naped. If you would lend Abel Moss 
there and me a couple o’ nags, we’ll catch 
them yet, my lady.”’ 

‘That we will,’”’ cried Abel. 


Vl 
Then she began 


APN Evy | 


A TERRIBLE 


take me where you fired that shot, and 
we'll follow the fresh wheel-tracks. They 
can’t beat us while they keep to a 
road.”’ 

The two men were soon mounted, and 
in pursuit, amid the cheers of the now 
excited villagers. But still the perpetra- 
tors of the outrage had more than an 
hour’s start; and an hour was twelve 
miles. 

And now Lady Bassett, who had borne 
up so bravely, was seized with a deadly 
faintness, and supported into the house. 

All this spread like wild-fire, and roused 
the villagers, and they must have a hand 
init. Parson had said Mr. Bassett was 
to blame; and that passed from one to 
another, and so fermented that, in the 
evening, a crowd collected round High- 
more House and demanded Mr. Bassett. 

The servants were alarmed, and said 
he was not at home. 

Then the men demanded boisterously 
what he had done with Sir Charles, and 
threatened to break the windows unless 
they were told; and, as nobody in the 
house could tell them, the women egged 
on the men, and they did break the win- 
dows; but they no sooner saw their own 
work than they were a little alarmed at 
it, and retired, talking very loud to sup- 
port their waning courage and check their 
rising remorse at their deed. 

They left a house full of holes and 
screams, and poor little Mrs. Bassett 
_ half dead with fright. 

As for Lady Bassett, she spent a hor- 
rible night of terror, suspense, and agony. 
She could not lie down, nor even sit still ; 
she walked incessantly, wringing her 
hands, and groaning for news. 

Mary Wells did all she could to com- 
fort her; but it was a situation beyond 
the power of words to alleviate. 

Her intolerable suspense lasted till four 
o’clock in the morning ; and then, in the 
still night, horses’ feet came clattering up 
to the door. 

Lady Bassett went into the hall. It 
was dimly lighted bya single lamp. The 
great door was opened, aid in clattered 
Moss and Drake, splashed and weary and 
downcast. 


TEMPTATION. 91 


*“ Well?’ cried Lady Bassett, clasping 
her hands. 

‘My lady,’’ said Moss, “‘ we tracked 
the carriage into the next county, to a 
place thirty miles from here—to a lodge 
—and there they stopped us. The place 
is well guarded with men and great big 
dogs. We heerd ’em bark, didn’t us, 
MV 

““ Ay,’’ said Drake, dejectedly. 

‘The man as kept the lodge was short, 
but civil. Says he, ‘This is a place no- 
body comes in but by law, and nobody 
goes out but by law. If the gentleman is 
here you may go home and sleep; he is 
safe enough.’ ”’ 

‘““A prison? No!”’ 

‘A ’sylum, my lady.’’ 


CHAPTER XXI. 


THE lady put her hand to her heart, 
and was silent a long time. 

At last she said, doggedly but faintly, 
“You will go with me to that place to- 
morrow, one of you.”’ 

‘*T’ll go, my lady,’’ said Moss. ‘* Will, 
here, had better not show his face. They 
might take the law on him for that there 
shot.’’ | 

Drake hung his head, and his ardor was 
evidently cooled by discovering that Sir 
Charles had been taken to a mad-house. 

Lady Bassett saw and sighed, and said 
she would take Moss to show her the way. 

At eleven o’clock next morning a light 
carriage and pair came round to the Hall 
gate, and a large basket, a portmanteau, 
and a bag were placed on the roof under 
care of Moss; smaller packages were put 
inside; and Lady Bassett and her maid 
got in, both dressed in black. 

They reached Bellevue House at half- 
past two. The lodge-gate was open, to 
Lady Bassett’s surprise, and they drove 
through some pleasant grounds to a large 
white house. 


92 WORKS OF 

The place at first sight had no distinct- 
ive character: great ingenuity had been 
used to secure the inmates without seem- 
ing to incarcerate them. There were no 
bars to the lower front windows, and the 
side windows, with their defenses, were 
shrouded by shrubs. The sentinels were 
out of sight, or employed on some occu- 
pation or other, but within call. Some 
patients were playing at cricket; some 
ladies looking on; others strolling on the 
gravel with a nurse, dressed very much 
like themselves, who did not obtrude her 
functions unnecessarily. All was appar- 
ent indifference, and Argus-eyed vigilance. 
So much for the surface. 

Of course, even at this moment, some 
of the locked rooms had violent and mis- 
erable inmates. 

The hall door opened as the carriage 
drew up; a respectable servant came for- 
ward. 

Lady Bassett handed him her card, 
and said, ‘‘ l am come to see my husband, 
Sing, 

The man never moved a muscle, but 
said, ‘* You must wait, if you please, till I 
take your card in.”’ 

He soon returned, and said, ‘‘ Dr. Suaby 
is not here, but the gentleman in charge 
will see you.”’ 

Lady Bassett got out, and, beckoning 
Mary Wells, followed the servant into a 
curious room, half library, half chemist’s 
shop; they called it ‘‘the laboratory.’’ 

Here she found a tall man leaning on a 
dirty mantelpiece, who received her stiffly. 
He had a pale mustache, very thin lips, 
and altogether a severe manner. His 
head bald, rather prematurely, and whisk- 
ers abundant. 

Lady Bassett looked him all over with 
one glance of her woman’s eye, and saw 
she had a hard and vain man to deal 
with. 

“* Are you the gentleman to whom this 
house belongs ?”’ she faltered. 

“No, madam; I am in charge during 
Dr. Suaby’s absence.”’ 

‘«That comes to the same thing. Sir, I 
am come to see my dear husband.”’ 

«* Have you an order ?”’ 

‘* An order, sir? Iam his wife.’’ 


CHARLES READE. 


| Mr. Salter shrugged his shoulders a lit- 
tle, and said, ‘‘1 have no authority to let 
any visitor see a patient without an order 
from the person by whose authority he is 
placed here, or else an order from the 
commissioners. ”’ 

“But that cannot apply to his wife; 
to her who is one with him, for better for 
worse, in sickness or health.”’ 

““Tt seems hard; but I have no discre- 
tion in the matter. The patient only came 
yesterday—much excited. He is better 
to-day, and an interview with you would 
excite him again.’”’ 

‘Oh no! no! no! I can always soothe 
him. I will be so mild, so gentle. You 
can be present, and hear every word I 
say. I will only kiss him, and tell him 
who has done this, and to be brave. for 
his wife watches over him; and, sir, I will 
beg him to be patient, and not blame you 
nor any of the people here.’’ 

‘* Very proper, very proper ; but really 
this interview must be postponed till you 
have an order, or Dr. Suaby returns. He 
can violate his own rules if he likes; but 
I cannot, and, indeed, I dare not.”’ 

‘Dare not let a lady see her husband ? 
Then you are not a man. Oh, can this 
be England? It is too inhuman.”’ 

Then she began to cry and wring her 
hands. 

‘‘This is very painful,’’ said Mr. Salter, 
and left the room. 

The respectable servant looked in soon 
after, and Lady Bassett told him, between 
her sobs, that she had brought some 
clothes and things for her husband. 
‘Surely, sir,’’ said she, ‘‘ they will not 
refuse me that? ”’ 

‘7 1h0rd, no, marvam, aesaid.. bhewemals 
‘You can give them to the keeper and 
nurse in charge of him.”’ 

Lady Bassett slipped a guinea into the 
man’s hand directly. ‘‘ Let me see those 
people,’’ said she. 

The man winked, and vanished: he 
soon reappeared, and said, loudly, ‘*‘ Now, 
madam, if you will order the things into 
the hall.”’ 

Lady Basset came out and gave the 
order. 

A short, bull-necked man, and rather a 


A TERRIBLE 


pretty young woman with a flaunting 
cap, bestirred themselves getting down 
the things ; and Mr. Salter came out and 
looked on. 

Lady Bassett called Mary Wells, and 
gave her a five-pound note to slip into 
the man’s hand. She telegraphed the 
girl, who instantly came near her with an 
India rubber bath, and, affecting igno- 
rance, asked her what that was. 

Lady Bassett dropped three sovereigns 
into the bath, and said, ‘‘Ten times, 
twenty times that, if you are kind to him. 
Tell him it is his cousin’s doing, but his 
wife watches over him.”’ 

‘All right,’’ said the girl. 
again when the doctor is here.”’ 

All this passed, in swift whispers, a few 
yards from Mr. Salter, and he now came 
forward and offered his arm to conduct 
Lady Bassett to the carriage. 

But the wretched, heart-broken wife 
forgot her art of pleasing. She shrank 
from him with a faint cry of aversion, and 
got into her carriage unaided. Mary 
Wells followed her. 

Mr. Salter was unwilling to receive this 
rebuff. He followed, and said, ‘‘The 
clothes shall be given, with any message 
you may think fit to intrust to me.’’ 

Lady Bassett turned away sharply from 
him, and said to Mary Wells, ‘‘ Tell him 
to drive home. Home! I have none 
now. Its light is torn from me.’’ 

The carriage drove away as she uttered 
these piteous words. 

She cried at intervals all the way home; 
and could hardly drag herself upstairs to 
bed. 

Mr. Angelo called next day with bad 
news. Not a magistrate would move a 
finger against Mr. Bassett: he had the 
law on his side. Sir Charles was evi- 
dently insane; it was quite proper he 
should be put in security before he did 
some mischief to himself or Lady Bassett. 
*“They say, why was he hidden for two 
months, if there was not something very 
wrong ?”’ 

Lady Bassett ordered the carriage and 
paid several calls, to counteract this fatal 
impression. 

She found, to her horror, she might as 


“Come 


TEMPTATION. 93 


well try to movearock. There was plenty 
of kindness and pity ; but the moment she 
began to assure them her husband was 
not insane she was met with the dead si- 
lence of polite incredulity. One or two 
old friends went further, and said, “My 
dear, we are told he could not be taken 
away without two doctors’ certificates : 
now, consider, they must know better 
than you. Have patience, and let them 
cure him.*’ 

Lady Bassett withdrew her friendship 
on the spot from two ladies for contra- 
dicting her on such a subject; she re- 
turned home almost wild herself. 

In the village her carriage was stopped 
by a woman with her hair all flying, who 
told her, in a lamentable voice, that 
Squire Bassett had sent nine men to 
prison for taking Sir Charles’s part and 
ill-treating his captors. 

“My lawyer shall defend them at my 
expense,’’ said Lady Bassett, with a sigh. 

At last she got home, and went up to 
her own room, and there was Mary Wells 
waiting to dress her. 

She tottered in, and sank into a chair. 
But, after this temporary exhaustion, 
came a rising tempest of passion ; her eyes 
roved, her fingers worked, and her heart 
seemed to come out of her in words of 
fire. ‘“‘I have not a friend in all the 
county. That villain has only to say 
“Mad,) andualueturny (fom) imenaseitean 
angel of truth had said ‘ Criminal.’ We 
have no friend but one, and she is my 
servant. Now go and envy wealth and 
titles. No wife in this parish is so poor as 
I; powerless in the folds of a serpent. I 
can’t see my husband without an order 
from him. He is all power, I and mine 
all weakness.’’ She raised her clinched 
fists, she clutched her beautiful hair as 
if she would tear it out by the roots. “I 
shaileounacdtelishall’oormad Heino 
said she, allofa sudden. ‘“‘ That will not 
do. That is what he wants—and then my 
darling would be defenseless. I will not 
go mad.’’ Then suddenly grinding her 
white teeth : ‘‘1’l1 teach him to drive a 
lady to despair. VU fight.’’ 

She descended, almost without a break, 
from the fury of a Pythoness to a strange 


94 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


calm. Oh! then it is her sex are dan- 
gerous. 

‘* Don’t look so pale,’’ said she, and she 
actually smiled. ‘‘ All is fair against so 
foul a villain. You and I will defeat him. 
Dress me, Mary.”’ 

Mary Wells, carried away by the un- 
usual violence of a superior mind, was 
quite bewildered. 

Lady Bassett smiled a strange smile, 
and said, ‘‘I’ll show you how to dress 
me;’’? and she did give her a lesson that 
astonished her. 

‘«“And now,’’ said Lady Bassett, ‘I 
shall dress you.’”’ And she took a loose 
full dress out of her wardrobe, and made 
Mary Wells put it on; but first she in- 
serted some stuffing so adroitly that Mary 
seemed very buxom, but what she wished 
to hide was hidden. Notso Lady Bassett 
herself. Her figure looked much rounder 
than in the last dress she wore. 

With all this she was late for dinner, 
and when she went down Mr. Angelo had 
just finished telling Mr. Oldfield of the 
mishap to the villagers. 

Lady Bassett came in animated and 
beautiful. 

Dinner was announced directly, and a 
commonplace conversation kept up till 
the servants were got rid of. She then 
told Mr. Oldfield how she had been re- 
fused admittance to Sir Charles at Belle- 
vue House, a plain proof, to her mind, 
they knew her husband was not insane; 
and begged him to act with energy, and 
get Sir Charles out before his reason 
could be permanently injured by the out- 
rage and the horror of his situation. 

This led to a discussion, in which Mr. 
Angelo and Lady Bassett threw out 
various suggestions, and Mr. Oldfield 
cooled their ardor with sound objections. 
He was familiar with the Statutes de 
Lunatico, and said they had been strictly 
observed both in the capture of Sir Charles 
and in Mr. Salter’s refusal to let the wife 
see the husband. In short, he appeared 
either unable or unwilling to see any- 
thing except the strong legal position of 
the adverse party. 

Mr. Oldfield was one of those prudent 
lawyers who search for the adversary’s 


strong points, that their clients may not 
be taken by surprise; and that is very 
wise of them. But wise things require 
to be done wisely: he sometimes carried 
this system so far as to discourage his 
client too much. It is a fine thing to 
make your client think his case the 
weaker of the two, and then win it for 
him easily; that gratifies your own foi- 
ble, professional vanity. But suppose, 
with your discouraging him so, he flings 
up or compromises a winning case? Sup- 
pose he takes the huff and goes to some 
other lawyer, who will warm him with 
hopes instead of cooling him with a one- 
sided and hostile view of his case ? 

In the present discussion Mr. Oldfield’s 
habit of beginning by admiring his ad- 
versaries, together with his knowledge 
of law and little else, and his secret 
conviction that Sir Charles was un- 
sound of mind, combined to paralyze him; 
and, not being a man of invention, he 
could not see his way out of the wood at 
all; he could negative Mr. Angelo’s sug- 
gestions and give good reasons, but he 
could not, or did not, suggest anything 
better to be done. 

Lady Bassett listened to his negative 
wisdom with a bitter smile, and said, at 
last, with a sigh: ‘‘It seems, then, we 
are to sit quiet and do nothing, while Mr. 
Bassett and his solicitor strike blow upon 
blow. There! I’ll fight my own battle ; 
and do you try and find some way of de- 
fending the poor souls that are in trouble 
because they did not sit with their hands 
before them when their benefactor was 
outraged. Command my purse, if money 
will save them from prison.”’ | 

Then she rose with dignity, and walked 
like a camelopard all down the room on 
the side opposite to Mr. Oldfield. Angelo 
flew to open the door, and in a whisper 
begged a word with her in private. She 
bowed ascent, and passed on from the 
room. 

‘“What a fine creature ! ’’ 
Oldfield. ‘‘ How she walks !”’ 

Mr. Angelo made no reply to this. but 
asked him what was to be done for the 
poor men: ‘‘they will be up before the 
Bench to-morrow.”’ 


said Mr. 


x 


A TERRIBLE 


Stung a little by Lady Bassett’s re- 
mark, Mr. Oldfield answered, promptly, 
‘“We must get some tradesmen to bail 
them with our money. It will only be a 
few pounds apiece. If the bail is accepted, 
they shall offer pecuniary compensation, 
and get up a defense; find somebody to 
swear Sir Charles was sane—that sort of 
evidence is always to be got. Counsel 
must do the rest. Simple natives—bene- 
factor outraged — honest impulse — re- 
gretted, the moment they understood the 
capture had been legally made. Then 
throw dirt on the plaintiff. He is mali- 
cious, and can be proved to have forsworn 
himself in Bassett v. Bassett.’’ 

A tap at the door, and Mary Wells put 
in her head. “If you please, sir, my lady 
is tired, and she wishes to say a word to 
you before she goes upstairs.’’ 

‘«“Hxcuse me one minute,’’ said Mr. 
Angelo, and followed Mary Wells. She 
ushered him into a boudoir, where he 
found Lady Bassett seated in an arm- 
chair, with her head on her hand, and her 
eyes fixed sadly on the carpet. 


She smiled faintly, and said, “ Well, 


what do you wish to say to me? ”’ 

“Tt is about Mr. Oldfield. He is clearly 
incompetent. ”’ 

““T don’t know. I snubbed him, poor 
man: but if the law is all against us! ”’ 

‘* How does he know that ? He assumes 
it because he is prejudiced in favor of the 
enemy. How does he know they have 
done everything the Act of Parliament 
requires? And, if they have, Law is not 
invincible. When Law defies Morality, it 
gets baffled, and trampled on in all civil- 
ized communities.”’ 

*“T never heard that before.’’ 

‘“But you would if you had been at Ox- 
ford,”’ said he, smiling. 

ce Ab ! 29 

“ What we want is a man of genius, of 
invention; a man who will see every 
chance, take every chance, lawful or un- 
lawful, and fight with all manner of 
weapons ” 

Lady Bassett’s eye flashed a moment. 
** Ah !”’ said she; ‘‘ but where can I find 
such a man, with knowledge to guide his 
Zeal? ’’ 


TEMPTATION. 95 


‘¢T think I know of a man who could at 
all events advise you, if you would ask 
him.”’ 

< S.D te O22" 

‘‘He is a writer; and opinions vary as 
to his merit. Some say he has talent ; 
others say it is all eccentricity and affecta- 
tion. One thing is certain—his books 
bring about the changes he demands. 
And then he is in earnest; he has taken 
a good many alleged lunatics out of con- 
finement.”’ 

‘“Is it possible ? 
him at once.’’ 

‘(He lives in London; but I have a 
friend who knows him. May I send an 
outline to him through that friend, and 
ask him whether he can advise you in the 
matter ? ”’ 

“You may; and thank you a thousand 
times ! ’’ 

<“A mind like that, with knowledge, 
zeal, and invention, must surely throw 
some light.’’ 

‘*One would think so, dear friend.”’ 

“T’ll write to-night and send a letter 
to Greatrex; we shall perhaps get an 
answer the day after to-morrow.”’ 

“Ah! you are not the one to go to 
sleep in the service of afriend. A writer, 
did you say? What does he write ?’”’ 

‘¢ Hiction ge 

“What, novels? ”’ 

** And dramas and all.”’ 

Lady Bassett sighed incredulously. <I 
should never think of going to Fiction for 
wisdom. ”’ 

“When the Family Calas were about 
to be executed unjustly, with the con- 
sent of all the lawyers and statesmen in 
France, one man in a nation saw the 
error, and fought for the innocent, and 
saved them; and that one wise man in 
a nation of fools was a writer of fiction.”’ 

‘Oh! a learned Oxonian can always 
answer a poor ignorant thing like me. 
One swallow does not make summer, for 
all that.’’ 

‘But this writer’s fictions are not lke 
the novels you read; they are works of 
laborious research. Besides, he is a law- 
yer, as well as a novelist.”’ 


(ede 


‘¢ Oh, if he is a lawyer! 


Then let us apply to 


96 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


‘¢Then I may write? ”’ 

«“Yes,’’ said Lady Bassett, despond- 
ingly. 

‘“What is to become of Oldfield ? ”’ 

“Send him to the drawing-room. I 
will go down and endure him for another 
hour. You can write your letter here, 
and then please come and relieve me of 
Mr. Negative.”’ 

She rang, and ordered coffee and tea 
into the drawing-room; and Mr. Oldfield 
found her very cold company. 

In half an hour Mr. Angelo came down, 
looking flushed and very handsome ; and 
Lady Bassett had some fresh tea made 
for him. 

This done she bade the gentlemen good- 
night, and went to her room. Here she 
found Mary Wells full of curiosity to know 
whether the lawyer would get Sir Charles 
out of the asylum. 

Lady Bassett gave loose to her indigna- 
tion, and said nothing was to be expected 
from such a Nullity. ‘‘Mary, he could 
not see. I gave him every opportunity. 
I walked slowly down the room before 
him after dinner; and I came into the 
drawing-room and moved about, and yet 
he could not see.”’ 

“«¢Then you will have to tell him, that 
is all.”’ 

‘‘Never; no more shall you. I?ll not 
trust my fate, and Sir Charles’s, to a 
man that has no eyes.”’ 

For this feminine reason she took a 
spite against poor Oldfield; but to Mr. 
Angelo she suppressed the real reason, 
and entered into that ardent gentleman's 
grounds of discontent, though these alone 
would not have entirely dissolved her re- 
spect for the family solicitor. | 

Next afternoon Angelo came to her in 
great distressandire. ‘‘ Beaten! beaten ! 
and all through our adversaries having 
more talent. Mr. Bassett did not appear 
at first. Wheeler excused him on the 
ground that his wife was seriously ill 
through the fright. Bassett’s servants 
were called, and swore to the damage 
and to the men, all but one. He got off. 
Then Oldfield made a dry speech; and a 
tradesman he had prepared offered bail. 


The magistrates were consulting, when 


in burst Mr. Bassett all in black, and 
made a speech fifty times stronger than 
Oldfield’s, and sobbed, and told them the 
rioters had frightened his wife so she had 
been prematurely confined, and the child 
was dead. Could they take bail for a 
riot, a dastardly attack by a mob of 
cowards on a poor defenseless woman, 
the gentlest and most inoffensive creature 
in Kngland? Then he went on: ‘They 
were told J was not in the house; and 
then they found courage to fling stones, 
to terrify my wife and kill my child. Poor 
soul!’ he said, ‘she lies between life and 
death herself: and I come here in an 
agony of fear, but I come for justice; the 
man of straw, who offers bail, is furnished 
with the money by those who stimulated 
the outrage. Defeat that fraud, and 
teach these cowards who war on de- 
fenseless ladies that there is humanity 
and justice and law in the land.’ Then 
Oldfield tried to answer him with his 
hems and his haws; but Bassett turned 
on him like a giant, and swept him 
away.” 

“Poor woman! ”’ 

‘‘ Ah! that is true: I am afraid I have 
thought too little of her. But you suffer, 
and so must she. It is the most terrible 
feud; one would think this was Corsica 
instead of Kngland, only the fighting is 
not done with daggers. But, after this, 
pray lean no more on that Oldfield. We 
were all carried away at first; but, now 
I think of it, Bassett must have been in 
the court, and held back to make the cli- 
max. Oh, yes! it was another surprise 
and another success. They are all sent 
to jail. Superior generalship! If Wheeler 
had been our man, we should have had 
eight wives crying for pity, each with one 
child in her arms, and another holding on 
to her apron. Do, pray, Lady Bassett, 
dismiss that Nullity.’’ 

“Oh, 1 cannot do, that: “he sistsin 
Charles’s lawyer; but I have promised 
you to seek advice elsewhere, and so I 
will.’’ 

The conversation was interrupted by 
the tolling of the church-bell. 

The first note startled Lady Bassett, 
and she turned pale. 


A THRRIBLE 
‘“‘T must leave you,’’ said Angelo, re- 
gretfully. ‘‘I have to bury Mr. Bassett’s 
little boy ; he lived an hour.”’ 

Lady Bassett sat and heard the bell 
toll. 

Strange, sad thoughts passed through 
her mind. ‘‘Is it saddest when it tolls, 
or when it rings—that bell? He has 
killed his own child by robbing me of 
my husband. We are in the hands of 
God, after all, let Wheeler be ever so 
cunning, and Oldfield ever so simple.— 
And I am not acting by that.— Where 
is my trust in God’s justice ?—Oh, thou 
of little faith !—What shall I do? Love 
is stronger in me than faith—stronger 
than anything in heaven or earth. God 
forgive me—God help me—I will go back. 

‘‘But oh, to stand still, and be good 
and simple, and to see my husband tram- 
pled on by a cunning villain ! 

‘«“Why is there a future state, where 
everything is to be different? no hate; 
no injustice ; all love. Why is it not allof 
apiece? Why begin wrong if it is to end 
all right? If I was omnipotent it should 
be right from the first.—Oh, thou of little 
faith !—Ah, me! it is hard to see fools 
and devils, and realize angels unseen. 
Oh, that I could shut my eyes in faith 
and go to sleep, and drift on the right 
path; for I shall never take it with my 
eyes open, and my heart bleeding for 
him.’’ 

Then her head fell languidly back, her 
eyes closed, and the tears welled through 
them: they knew the way by this time. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


NEXT morning in came Mr. Angelo, 
with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes. 
‘*] have got a letter, a most gratifying 
one. My friend called on Mr. Rolfe, and 
gave him my lines; and he replies direct 
tome. May I read you his letter ? ”’ 
‘Oh, yes.”’ 


TEMPTATION. 97 

‘*« DEAR SirR—The case you have sent 
me, of a gentleman confined on certifi- 
cates by order of an interested relative— 
as you presume, for you have not seen 
the order—and on grounds you think in- 
sufficient, is interesting, and some of it 
looks true; but there are gaps in the 
statement, and I dare not advise in so 
nice a matter till these are filled; but 
that, I suspect, can only be done by the 
lady herself. She had better call on me 
in person; it may be worth her while. 
At home every day, 10—3, this week. 
As for yourself, you need not address me 
through Greatrex, I have seen you pull 
No. 6, and afterward stroke in the Uni- 
versity boat, and you dived in Ports- 
mouth Harbor, and saved a sailor. See 
‘Ryde Journal,’’ Aug. 10, p. 4, col. 3; 
cited in my Day-book Aug. 10, and also 
in my Index hominum, in voce ‘“ An- 
gelo’’’—ha! ha! here’s a fellow for de- 
tavl / ‘Yours very truly, 

es RORREH 04 


‘And did you?”’ 

‘¢Did I what? ”’ 

‘* Dive and save a sailor.”’ 

‘“No; I nailed him just as he was sink- 
Ino 

‘* How good and brave you are 

Angelo blushed like a girl. ‘It makes 
me too happy to hear such words from 
you. But I vote we don’t talk about me. 
Will you call on Mr. Rolfe ?”’ 

““Is he married ? ”’ 

Angelo opened his eyes at the question. 
‘¢T think not,’’ said he. ‘“‘ Indeed, I know 
he is not.”’ 

“Could you get him down here ? ”’ 

Angelo shook his head. ‘If he knew 
you, perhaps; but can you expect him to 
come here upon your business? These 
popular writers are spoiled by the ladies. 
I doubt if he would walk across the street 
to advise a stranger. Candidly, why 
should he ?”’ 

“No; and it was ridiculous vanity to 
suppose he would. But I never called on 
a gentleman in my life.’’ 

“Take me with you. You can go 
up at nine, and be back to a late 
dinner.’’ 


"4. 


Nets 


READE—VOL. VIII. 


98 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


‘¢T shall never have the courage to go. 
Let me have his letter.”’ 

He gave her the letter, and she took 
it away. 

At six o’clock she sent Mary Wells to 
Mr. Angelo, with a note to say she had 
studied Mr. Rolfe’s letter, and there was 
more in it than she had thought; but his 
going off from her husband to boat-rac- 
ing seemed trivial, and she could not 
make up her mind to go to London to 
consult a novelist on such a_ serious 
matter. 

At nine she sent to say she should go, 
but could not think of dragging him 
there: she should take her maid. 

Before eleven, she half repented this 
resolution, but her maid kept her to it; 
and at half past twelve next day they 
reached Mr. Rolfe’s door; an old-fash- 
ioned, mean-looking house, in one of the 
briskest thoroughfares of the metropolis ; 
a cabstand opposite to the door, and a 
tide of omnibuses passing it. 

Lady Bassett viewed the place discon- 
tentedly, and said to herself, ‘‘ What a 
poky little place for a writer to live in ; 
how noisy, how unpoetical ! ”’ 

They knocked at the door. 
opened by a maid-servant. 

““Is Mr. Rolfe at home? ”’ 

“Yes, ma’am. Please give me your 
card, and write the business.”’ 

Lady Bassett took out her card and 
wrote a line or two on the back of it. 
The maid glanced at it, and showed her 
into a room, while she took the card to 
her master. 

The room was rather long, low, and 
nondescript; scarlet flock paper; cur- 
tains and sofas green Utrecht velvet ; 
woodwork and pillars white and gold; 
two windows looking on the street; at 
the other end folding-doors with scarcely 
any wood-work, all plate-glass, but partly 
hidden by heavy curtains of the same 
color and material as the others. Ac- 
customed to large, lofty rooms, Lady 
Bassett felt herself in a long box here ; 
but the colors pleased her. She said to 


It was 


Mary Wells, ‘‘ What a funny, cozy little. 


place for a gentleman to live in !’’ 
Mr. Rolfe was engaged with some one, 


and she was kept waiting; this was quite 
new to her, and discouraged her, already 
intimidated by the novelty of the situa- 
tion. 

She tried to encourage herself by say- 
ing it was for her husband she did this 
unusual thing; but she felt very miser- 
able and inclined to cry. 

At last a bell rang; the maid came in 
and invited Lady Bassett to follow her. 
She opened the glass folding-doors, and 
took them into a small conservatory, 
walled like a grotto, with ferns sprout- 
ing out of rocky fissures, and spars spark- 
ling, water dripping. Then she opened 
two more glass folding-doors, and ush- 
ered them into an empty room, the like 
of which Lady Bassett had never seen ; 
it was large in itself, and multiplied ten- 
fold by great mirrors from floor to ceil- 
ing, with no frames but a narrow oak 
beading ; opposite her, on entering, was 
a bay-window all plate-glass, the central 
panes of which opened, like doors, upon a 
pretty little garden that glowed with 
color, and was backed by fine trees be- 
longing to the nation; for this garden 
ran up to the wall of Hyde Park. 

The numerous and large mirrors all 
down to the ground laid hold of the 
garden and the flowers, and by double 
and treble reflection filled the room with 
delightful nooks of verdure and color. 

To confuse the eye still more, a quantity 


of young India-rubber trees, with glossy 


leaves, were placed before the large cen- 
tral mirror. The carpet was a warm 
velvet-pile, the walls were distempered, 
a French gray, not cold, but with a tint 
of mauve that gave a warm and cheering 
bloom; this soothing color gave great 
effect to the one or two masterpieces of 
painting that hung on the walls, and to 
the gilt frames; the furniture, oak and 
marqueterie highly polished; the cur- 
tains, scarlet merino, through which the 
sun shone, and, being a London sun, dif- 
fused a mild rosy tint favorable to female 
faces.. Not asound of London could be 
heard. : 

So far the room was romantic; but 
there was a prosaic corner to shock those 
who fancy that fiction is the spontaneous 


A TERRIBLE 


overflow of a poetic fountain fed by 
nature only; between the fireplace and 
the window, and within a foot or two of 
the wall, stood a gigantic writing-table, 
with the signs of hard labor on it, and 
of severe system. Three plated buckets, 
each containing three pints, full of letters 
to be answered, other letters to be pasted 
into a classified guard-book, loose notes 
to be pasted into various books and 
classified (for this writer used to sneer at 
the learned men who say, ‘‘I will look 
among my papers forit;” he held that 
every written scrap ought either to be 
burned, or pasted into a classified guard- 
book, where it could be found by consult- 
ing the index) ; five things like bankers’ 
bill-books, into whose several compart- 
ments MS. notes and newspaper cuttings 
were thrown, as a preliminary toward 
classification in books. | 

Underneath the table was a formidable 
array of note-books, standing upright, 
and labeled on their backs. There were 
about twenty large folios of classified 
facts, ideas, and pictures—for the very 
wood-cuts were all indexed and classified 
on the plan of a tradesman’s ledger; 
there was also the receipt-book of the 
year, treated on the same plan. Receipts 
on a file would not do for this romantic 
creature. If a tradesman brought a bill, 
he must be able to turn to that trades- 
man’s name in a book, and prove in a 
moment whether it had been paid or not. 
Then there was a collection of solid 
quartos, and of smaller folio guard- 
books called Indexes. There was “ Index 
rerum et journalium ’’—‘‘ Index rerum et 
librorum ’’—*‘ Index rerum et hominum,”’ 
and a lot more; indeed, so many that, 
by way of climax, there was a fat folio 
ledger entitled ‘‘ Index ad Indices.’’ 

By the side of the table were six or 
seven thick pasteboard cards, each about 
the size of a large portfolio, and on these 
the author’s notes and extracts were col- 
lected from all his repertories into some- 
thing like a focus for a present purpose. 
He was writing a novel based on facts; 
facts, incidents, living dialogue, pictures, 
reflections, situations, were all on these 
cards to choose from, and arranged in 


TEMPTATION. 99 
headed columns; and some portions of 
the work he was writing on this basis of 
imagination and drudgery lay on the table 
in two forms, his own writing, and his 
secretary’s copy thereof, the latter cor- 
rected for the press. This copy was half 
margin, and so provided for additions 
and improvements ; but for one addition 
there were ten excisions, great and small. 

Lady Bassett had just time to take in 
the beauty and artistic character of the 
place, and to realize the appalling drud- 
gery that stamped it a workshop, when 
the author, who had dashed into his gar- 
den for a moment’s recreation, came to 
the window, and. furnished contrast No. 
3. For he looked neither like a poet nor 
a drudge, buta great fat country farmer. 
He was rather tall, very portly, smallish 
head, commonplace features, mild brown 
eye not very bright, short beard, and 
wore a suit of tweed all one color. Such 
looked the writer of romances founded on 
fact. He rolled up to the window—for, 
if he looked like a farmer, he walked like 
a Sailor—and stepped into the room. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


Mr. ROLFE surveyed the two women 
with a mild, inoffensive, ox-like gaze, and 
invited them to be seated with homely 
civility. 

He sat down at his desk, and turning 
to Lady Bassett, said, rather dreamily, 
‘“Qne moment, please: let me look at the 
case and my notes.’’ 

First his homely appearance, and now 
a certain languor about his manner, dis- 
couraged Lady Bassett more than it need; 
for all artists must pay for their excite- 
ments with occasional languor. Her 
hands trembled, and she began to gulp 
and try not to cry. 

Mr. Rolfe observed directly, and said, 
rather kindly, ‘‘ You are agitated; and 
no wonder.”’ 


100 


He then opened a sort of china closet, 
poured a few drops of a colorless liquid 
from a tiny bottle into a wine-glass, and 
filled the glass with water from a filter. 
‘‘ Drink that, if you please.”’ 

She looked at him with her eyes brim- 
ming. ‘‘ Must 1?” 

“Yes; it will do you good for once in a 
way. Itis only [gnatia.”’ 

She drank it by degrees, and a tear 
along with it that fell into the glass. 

Meantime Mr. Rolfe had returned to his 
notes and examined them. He then ad- 
dressed her, half stiffly, half kindly: 

‘‘Lady Bassett, whatever may be your 
husband’s condition—whether his illness 
is mental or bodily, or a mixture of the 
two—his clandestine examination by 
bought physicians, and his violent cap- 
ture, the natural effect of which must 
have been to excite him and retard his 
cure, were wicked and barbarous acts, 
contrary to God’s law and the common 
law of England, and, indeed, toall human 
law except our shallow, incautious Stat- 
utes de Lunatico: they were an insult to 
yourself, who ought at least to have been 
consulted, for your rights are higher and 
purer than Richard Bassett’s; therefore, 
as a wife bereaved of your husband by 
fraud and violence and the bare letter of 
a paltry statute whose spirit has been 
violated, you are quite justified in coming 
to me or to any public man you think can 
help your husband and you.’’ Then, with 
a certain bonhomie, ‘‘So lay aside your 
nervousness; let us go into this matter 
sensibly, like a big man and a little man, 
or like an old woman and a young woman, 
whichever you prefer.”’ 

Lady Bassett looked at him and smiled 
assent. She felt a great deal more at 
her ease after this opening. 

“‘T dare not advise you yet. I must 
know more than Mr. Angelo has told me. 
Will you answer my questions frankly ? ’’ 

PS ewilltiyeesir sae 

‘Whose idea was it confining Sir 
Charles Bassett to the house so much ?”’ 

‘*His own. He felt himself unfit for 
society.”’ 

“Did he describe his ailment to you 
then ? ”’ 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


“FV GS. 

** All the better; what did he say? ”’ 

‘* He said that, at times, a cloud seemed 
to come into his head, and then he lost 
all power of mind; and he could not bear 
to be seen in that condition.”’ 

‘‘This was after the epileptic seizure ? ”’ 

Ves asines 

‘‘Humph! Now will you tell me how 
Mr. Bassett, by mere words, could so en- 
rage Sir Charles as to give him a fit ? ”’ 

Lady Bassett hesitated. 

‘‘ What did he say to Sir Charles ? ”’ 

‘‘He did not speak to him. His child 
and nurse were there, and he called out 
loud, for Sir Charles to hear, and told the 
nurse to hold up his child to look at his 
inheritance.”’ 

‘‘Malicious fool! But did this enrage 
Sir Charles so much as to give him a 
Hines 

RemES 

‘‘He must be very sensitive.”’ 

“On that subject.”’ 

Mr. Rolfe was silent; and now, for the 
first time, appeared to think intently. 

His study bore fruit, apparently ; for 
he turned to Lady Bassett and said, sud- 
denly, ‘“‘ What is the strangest thing Sir 
Charles has said of late—the very strang- 
est? ’’ 

Lady Bassett turned red, and then 
pale, and made no reply. 

Mr. Rolfe rose and walked up to Mary 
Wells. 

“What is the maddest thing your mas- 
ter has ever said ? ”’ 

Mary Wells, instead of replying, looked 
at her mistress. 

The writer instantly put his great body 
between them. ‘‘ Come, none of that,’’ 
said he. ‘“‘I don’t want a falsehood—l 
want the truth.”’ 

“La, sir, 1 don’t know. My master he 
is not mad, ’msure. The queerest thing 
he ever said was—he did say at one time 
*twas writ on his face as he had no chil- 
dren.”’ 

“Ah! And that is why he would not 
go abroad, perhaps.”’ 

“That was one reason, sir, I do sup- 
pose.”’ i 

Mr. Rolfe put his hands behind his back 


A THRRIBLE 


and walked thoughtfully and rather dis- 
consolately back to his seat. 

‘‘Humph!” said he. Then, after a 
pause, ‘‘ Well, well; I know the worst 
now; that is one comfort. Lady Bas- 
sett, you really must be candid with me. 
Consider: good advice is like a tight 
glove; it fits the circumstances, and it 
does not fit other circumstances. No 
man advises so badly on a false and 
partial statement as I do, for the very 
reason that my advice is a close fit. Even 
now I can’t understand Sir Charles’s de- 
spair of having children of his own.”’ 

The writer then turned his looks on the 
two women, with an entire absence of ex- 
pression ; the sense of his eyes was turned 
inward, though the orbs were directed 
toward his visitors. 

With this lack-luster gaze, and in the 
tone of thoughtful soliloquy, he said, 
‘*Has Sir Charles Bassett no eyes? and 
are there women so furtive, so secret, or 
so bashful, they do not tell their hus- 
bands ? ”’ 

Lady Bassett turned with a scared 
look to Mary Wells, and that young 
woman showed her usual readiness. She 
actually came to Mr. Rolfe and half whis- 
pered to him, ‘‘ If you please, sir, gentle- 
men are blind, and my lady she is very 
bashful; but Sir Charles knows it now ; 
he have known it a good while; and it 
was a great comfort to him; he was 
getting better, sir, when the villains took 
him—ever so much better.”’ 

This solution silenced Mr. Rolfe, though 
it did not quite satisfy him. He fastened 
on Mary Wells’s last statement. 
tell me: between the day when those two 
doctors got into his apartment and the 
day of his capture, how long?” 

** About a fortnight.”’ 

‘* And in that particular fortnight was 
there a marked improvement ?”’ 

“La, yes, sir ; was there not, my lady?” 

““ Indeed there was, sir. He was _ be- 
ginning to take walks with me in the gar- 
den, and rides in an open carriage. He 
was getting better every day; and oh, 
sir, that is what breaks my heart! I 
was curing my darling so fast, and now 
they will do all they can to destroy him. 


fONOW « 


TEMPTATION, 101 


Their not letting his wife see him terrifies 
me,”’ 

‘7 think I can explain that. Now tell 
me—what time do you expect—a certain 
event ? ”’ 

Lady Bassett blushed and cast a hasty 
glance at the speaker; but he had a piece 
of paper before him, and was preparing 
to take down her reply, with the innocent 
face of a man who had asked a simple 
and necessary question in the way of 
business. 

Then Lady Bassett looked at Mary 
Wells, and this look Mr. Rolfe surprised, 
because he himself looked up to see why 
the lady hesitated. 

After an expressive glance between the 
mistress and maid, the lady said, almost 
inaudibly, ‘“* More than three months; ”’ 
and then she blushed all over. 

Mr. Rolfe looked at the two women a 
moment, and seemed a little puzzled at 
their telegraphing each other on such a 
subject ; but he coolly noted down Lady 
Bassett’s reply on a card about the size 
of a foolscap sheet, and then set himself 
to write on the same card the other facts 
he had elicited. 

While he was doing this very slowly, 
with great care and pains, the lady was 
eying him like a zoologist studying some 
new animal. Thesimplicity and straight- 
forwardness of his last question won by 
degrees upon her judgment and reconciled 
her to her Inquisitor, the more so as he 
was quiet but intense, and his whole soul 
in her case. She began to respect his 
simple straightforwardness, his civility 
without a grain of gallantry, and his cau- 
tion in eliciting all the facts before he 
would advise. 

After he had written down his synopsis, 
looking all the time as if his life depended 
on its correctness, he leaned back, and 
his ordinary but mobile countenance was 
transfigured into geniality. 

““Come,’’ said he, ‘“‘ grandmamma has 
pestered you with questions enough ; now 
you retort—ask me anything—speak your 
nund: these things should be attacked in 
every form, and sifted with every sieve.”’ 

Lady Bassett hesitated a moment, but 
at last responded to this invitation. 


102 WORKS 
«Sir, one thing that discourages me 
cruelly—my solicitor seems so inferior to 
Mr. Bassett’s. He can think of nothing 
but objections ; and so he does nothing, 
and lets us be trampled on: it is his 
being unable to cope with Mr. Bassett’s 
solicitor, Mr. Wheeler, that has led me 
in my deep distress to trouble you, whom 
I had not the honor of knowing.’’ 

«*y] understand your ladyship perfect- 
ly. Mr. Oldfield is a respectable solicitor, 
and Wheeler is a sharp country practi- 
tioner ; and—to use my favorite Ameri- 
canism—you feel like fighting with a 
blunt knife against a sharp one.” 

‘“‘That is my feeling, sir, and it drives 
me almost wild sometimes.”’ 

‘Hor your comfort, then, in my earlier 
litigations—I have had sixteen lawsuits 
for myself and other oppressed people-—L 
had often that very impression ; but the 
result always corrected it. Legal battles 
are like other battles: first you have 
a skirmish or two, and then a great bat- 
tle in court. Now sharp attorneys are 
very apt to win the skirmish and lose the 
battle. Isee a general of this stamp in 
Mr. Wheeler, and you need not fear him 
much. Of course an antagonist is never 
to be despised ; but I would rather have 
Wheeler-against you than Oldfield. An 
honest man like Oldfield blunders into 
wisdom, the Lord knows how. Your 
Wheelers seldom get beyond cunning; 
and cunning does not see far enough to 
cope with men of real sagacity and fore- 
thought in matters so complicated as 
this. Oldfield, acting for Bassett, would 
have pushed rapidly on to an examina- 
tion by the court. You would have 
evaded it, and put yourself in the 
wrong; and the inquiry, well urged, 
might have been adverse to Sir Charles. 
Wheeler has taken a more cunning and 
violent course—it strikes more terror, 
does more immediate harm; but what 
does it lead to? Very little; and it dis- 
arms them of their sharpest weapon, the 
immediate inquiry ; for we could now de- 
lay and greatly prejudice an inquiry on 
the very ground of the outrage and un- 
necessary violence; and could demand 
time to get the patient as well as he was 


OF CHARLES 


READE. 


before the outrage. And, indeed, the 
court is very jealous of those who begin 
by going to a judge, and then alter their 
minds, and try to dispose of the case 
themselves. And to make matters 
worse, here they do it by straining an 
Act of Parliament opposed to equity.’’ 

‘‘T wish it may prove so, sir; but, 
meantime, Mr. Wheeler is active, Mr. 
Oldfield is passive. He has not an idea. 
He is a mere negative.”’ 

‘* Ah, that is because he is out of his 
groove. A smattering of law is not 
enough here. It wants a smattering of 
human nature too.’’ 

‘Then, sir, would you advise me to 
part with Mr. Oldfield ? ” 

‘No. Why make an enemy? Besides, 
he is the vehicle of communication with 
the other side. You must simply ignore 
him for a time.’’ 

‘*But is there nothing I can do, sir? 
for it is this cruel inactivity that kills 
me. Pray advise me—you know all 
now.”’ 

Mr. Rolfe, thus challenged, begged for 
a moment’s delay. 

‘‘ Let us be silent a minute,”’ said he, 
‘and think hard.’’ 

And, to judge by his face, he did think 
with great intensity. 


‘‘ Lady Bassett,’’ said he, very gravely, 
‘“‘T assume that ‘every fact you and Mr. 
Angelo have laid before me is true, and 
no vital part is kept back. Well, then, 
your present course is—Delay. Not the 
weak delay of those who procrastinate 


. what cannot be avoided ; but the wise de- 


lay of a general who can bring up over- 
powering forces, only give him time. 
Understand me, there is more than one 
game on the cards; but I prefer the 
surest. Wecould begin fighting openly 
to-morrow ; but that would be risking too 
much for too little. The law’s delay, the 
insolence of office, the up-hill and thorny 
way, would hurt Sir Charles’s mind at 
present. The apathy, the cruelty, the 
trickery, the routine, the hot and cold 
fits of hope and fear, would poison your 
blood, and perhaps lose Sir Charles the 
heir he pines for. Besides, if we give 


A TERRIBLE 


battle to-day we fight the heir at law ; 
but in three or four months we may have 
him on our side, and trustees appointed 
by you. By that time, too, Sir Charles 
will have got over that abominable cap- 
ture, and be better than he was a week 
ago, constantly soothed and consoled—as 
he will be—by the hope of offspring. 
When the right time comes, that mo- 
ment we strike, and with a sledge-ham- 
mer. No letters to the commissioners 
then, no petitioning Chancery to send a 
jury into the asylum, stronghold of prej- 
udice. J will cut your husband in two. 
Don’t be alarmed. I will merely give 
him, with your help, an alter ego, who 
shall effect his liberation and = ruin 
Richard Bassett—ruin him in damages 
and costs, and drive him out of the 
country, perhaps. Meantime you are 
not to be a lay figure, or a mere neg- 
ative.”’ 

‘©Oh, sir, Iam so glad of that! ’’ 

“Far from that: you will act defen- 
sively. Mr. Bassett has one chance ; you 
must be the person to extinguish it. In- 
judicious treatment in the asylum might 
retard Sir Charles’s cure; their leeches 
and their sedatives, administered by suck- 
ing apothecaries, who reason @ priori, 
instead of watching the effect of these 
things on the patient, might seriously in- 
jure your husband, for his disorder is 
connected with a weak circulation of 
blood in the vessels of the brain. We 
must. therefore guard against that at 
once. To work, then. Who keeps this 
famous asylum ? ” 

“Dr. Suaby.’’ 

‘Suaby ? I know that name. He has 
been here, I think. I must look in my 
Index rerum et hominum. Suaby? Not 
down. Try Asyla.—Asyla ; ‘Suaby: see 
letter-book for the year —, p. 368.’ An 
old letter-book. I must go elsewhere for 
that.”’ 

He went out, and after some time re- 
turned with a folio letter-book. 

‘“* Here are two letters to me from Dr. 
Suaby, detailing his system and inviting 
me to spend a week at hisasylum. Come, 
come; Sir Charles is with a man who 
does not fear inspection; for at this date 


TEMPTATION. 103 
I was bitter against private asylums— 
rather indiscriminately so, l fear. Stay! 
he visited me; I thought so. Here’s a 
description of him: ‘A pale, thoughtful 
man, with a remarkably mild eye: is 
against restraint of lunatics, and against 
all punishment of them — Quixotically 
so. Being cross-examined, declares that 
if a patient gave him a black eye he 
would not let a keeper handle him rough- 
ly, being irresponsible.’ No more would 
I, if I could givehim a good licking 
myself. Please study these two letters 
closely ; you may get a clew how to deal 
with the amiable writer in person.”’ 

“*Oh, thank you, Mr. Rolfe,’’ said Lady 
Bassett, flushing all over. She was so 
transported at having something to 
do. She quietly devoured the letters, 
and after she had read them said a 
load of fears was now taken off her 
mind. 

Mr. Rolfe shook his head. ‘*‘ You must 
not rely on Dr. Suaby too much. In a 
prison or an asylum each functionary is 
important in exact proportion to his nom- 
inal insignificance; and why? Because 
the greater his nominal unimportance the 
more he comes in actual contact with the 
patient. The theoretical scale runs thus: 
lst. The presiding physician. 2d. The 
medical subordinates. 3d. The keepers 
and nurses. The practical scale runs 
thus: lst. The keepers and nurses. 2d. 
The medical attendants. 3d. The presid- 
ing physician.’’ 

‘*T am glad to hear you say so, sir; for 
when I went to the asylum, and the medi- 
cal attendant, Mr. Salter, would not let 
me see my husband. I gave his keeper 
and the nurse a little money to be kind to 
him in his confinement.”’ , 

“You did! Yet you come here for ad- 
vice? This is the way: a man discourses 
and argues, and by profound reasoning— 
that is, by what he thinks profound, and 
it isn’t—arrives at the right thing; and 
lo! a woman, with her understanding 
heart and her hard, good sense, goes and 
does that wise thing humbly, without a 
word. SURSUM CORDA !—Cheer up, lov- 
ing heart!’’ shouted he, like the roar of 
a lion in ecstasies; *‘ you have done a 


104 WORKS 


masterstroke—without Oldfield, or Rolfe, 
or any other man.”’ 

Lady Bassett clasped her hands with 
joy, and some electric fire seemed to run 
through her veins; for she was all sensi- 
bilities, and this sudden triumphant roar- 
ing out of strong words was quite new to 
her, and carried her away. 

‘“Well,’’ said this eccentric personage, 
cooling quite as suddenly as he had fired, 
‘‘the only improvement I can suggest is, 
be a little more precise at your next visit. 
Promise his keepers twenty guineas apiece 
the day Sir Charles is cured ; and prom- 
ise them ten guineas apiece not to admin- 
ister one drop of medicine for the next 
two months ; and, of course, no leech nor 
blister. The cursed sedatives they believe 
in are destruction to Sir Charles Bassett. 
His circulation must not be made too slow 
one day, and too fast the next, which is 
the effect of a sedative, but made regular 
by exercise and nourishing food. So, 
then, you will square the keepers by 
their cupidity ; the doctor is on the right 
side per se. Shall we rely on these two, 
and ignore the medical attendants? No; 
why throw a chance away ? What is the 
key to these medical attendants? Hum! 
Try flunkyism. I have great faith in 
British flunkyism. Pay your next visit 
with four horses, two outriders, and 
blazing liveries. Don’t dress in perfect 
taste like that ; go in finer clothes than 
you ever wore in the morning, or ought 
to wear, except at a wedding; go not as 
a petitioner, but as a queen; and dazzle 
snobs; the which being dazzled, then 
tickle their vanity: don’t speak of Sir 
Charles as an injured man, nor as a man 
unsound in mind, but a gentleman who is 
rather ill; ‘but now, gentlemen, I feel 
your remarkable skill will soon set him 
right.’ Your husband runs that one 
risk; make him safe: a few smiles and 
a little flattery will do it; and if not, 
why, fight with all a woman’s weapons. 
Don’t be too nice: we must all hold a 
candle to the devil once in our lives. A 
wife’s love sanctifies a woman’s arts in 
fighting with a villain and disarming 
donkeys.’’ 

‘‘Oh, I wish I was there now 


} >? 


OF CHARLES READE. 


3 


‘‘“You are excited, madam,’’ said he, 
severely. ‘‘That is out of place—in a 
deliberative assembly.” 

‘*No, no; only I want to be there, 
doing all this for my dear husband.’’ 

‘You are very excited; and it is my 
fault. You must be hungry too: you 
have come a journey. There will be a 
reaction, and then you will be hysterical. 
Your temperament is of that kind.’’ 

He rang a bell and ordered his maid- 
servant to bring some beef-wafers and a 
pint of dry Champagne. 

Lady Bassett remonstrated, but he told 
her to be quiet; ‘“‘for,’’ said he, “‘I have 
a smattering of medicine, as well as of 
law and of human nature. Sir Charles 
must correspond with you. Probably he 
has already written you six letters com- 
plaining of this monstrous act—a. sane 
man incarcerated. Well, that class of 
letter goes into a letter-box in the hall 
of an asylum, but it never reaches its 
address. Please take a pen and write a 
formula.’’ He dictated as follows: 


‘My Dear Love—tThe trifling illness 
I had when I came here is beginning to 
give way to the skill and attention of the 
medical gentlemen here. They are all 
most kind and attentive: the place, as it 
is conducted, is a credit to the country.’’ 


Lady Bassett’s eyes sparkled. ‘* Oh, 
Mr. Rolfe, is not this rather artful ? ”’ 

‘* And is it not artful to put up a letter- 
box, encourage the writing of letters, and 
then open them, and suppress whatever 
is disagreeable? May every man who 
opens another man’s letter find that let- 
ter a trap. Here comes your medicine. 
You never drink champagne in the mid- 
dle of the day, of course ? ”’ 

aL L a TOs 

“Then it will be all the better medi- 
cine.”’ 

He made both mistress and maid eat 
the thin slices of beef and drink a glass 
of champagne. 

While they were thus fortifying them- 
selves he wrote his address on some 
Stamped envelopes, and gave them to 
Lady Bassett, and told her she had bet- 


A THRRIBLE 


ter write to him at once if anything 
occurred. ‘‘ You must also write to me 
if you really cannot get to see your hus- 
-pand. Then I will come down myself, 
with the public press at my back. But 
I am sure that will not be necessary in 
Dr. Suaby’s asylum. He is a better 
Christian than I am, confound him for 
it! You went too soon; your husband 
had been agitated by the capture ; Suaby 
was away; Salter had probably applied 
what he imagined to be soothing reme- 
dies, leeches—a blister—morphia. Re- 
sult, the patient was so much worse than 
he was before they touched him that 
Salter was aShamed to let you see him. 
Having really excited him, instead of 
soothing him, Sawbones Salter had to 
pretend that you would excite him. As 
if creation contained any mineral, drug 
simple, leech, Spanish -fly, gadfly, or 
showerbath, so soothing as a loving wife 
is to a man in affliction. New reading 
of an old song: 


‘If the heart of a man is oppressed with cares, 
It makes him much worse when a woman ap- 
pears.’ 


Go to-morrow; you will see him. He 
will be worse than he was; but not much. 
Somebody will have told him that his wife 
put him in there—’’ 

ce) OLN 1,7 

“And he won’t have believed it. His 
father was a Bassett; his mother a Le 
Compton; his great-great-great-grand- 
mother was a Rolfe: there is no cur’s 
blood in him. After the first shock he 
will have found the spirit and dignity of 
a gentleman to sustain adversity : these 
men of fashion are like that; they are 
better steel than women—and writers.”’ 

When he had said this he indicated by 
his manner that he thought he had ex- 
hausted the subject, and himself. 

Lady Bassett rose and said, ‘‘ Then, 
sir, I will take my leave; and oh! Iam 
sorry I have not your eloquent pen or 
your eloquent tongue to thank you. You 
have interested yourself in a stranger— 
you have brought the power of a great 
mind to bear on our distress. I came 
here a widow—now I feel a wife again. 


TEMPTATION. 105 
Your good words have warmed my very 
heart. 1 can only pray God to bless you, 
Tne t 

‘Pray say no more, madam,’’ said 
Mr. Rolfe, hastily. “A gentleman can- 
not be always writing lies; an hour or 
two given to truth and justice is a whole- 
Some diversion. At all events, don’t 
thank me till my advice has proved 
worth it.”’ 

He rang the bell; the servant came, 
and showed the way to the street door. 
Mr. Rolfe followed them to the passage 
only, whence he bowed ceremoniously 
once more to Lady Bassett as she went 
out. 

As she passed into the street she heard 
a fearful clatter. It was her counselor 
tearing back to his interrupted novel like 
a distracted bullock. 

‘* Well, I don’t think much of he,’”’ said 
Mary Wells. 

Lady Bassett was mute to that, and all 
the journey home very absorbed and 
taciturn, impregnated with ideas she 
could not have invented, but was more 
able to execute than the inventor. She 
was absorbed in digesting Rolfe’s every 
word, and fixing his map in her mind, 
and filling in details to his outline; so 
small-talk stung her: she gave her com- 
panion very short answers, especially 
when she disparaged Mr. Rolfe. 

“You couldn’t get in a word edge- 
ways,’’ said Mary Wells. 

‘“‘T went to hear wisdom, and not to 
chatter.”’ 

‘He doesn’t think small beer of his- 
self, anyhow.”’ 

‘“‘ How can he, and see other men ?”’ 

‘Well, I don’t think much of him, for 
my part.” 

“T dare say the Queen of Sheba’s 
lady’s-maid thought Solomon a silly 
thing.”’ 

‘“‘] don’t know; that was afore my 
time ’’ (rather pertly). 

‘Of course it was, or you couldn’t 
imitate her.”’ 

On reaching home she ordered a light 
dinner upstairs, and sent directions to 
the coachman and grooms. 

At nine next morning the four-in-hand 


106 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


came round, and they started for the 
asylum—coachman and two more in 
brave liveries; two outriders. 

Twenty miles from Huntercombe they 
changed the wheelers, two fresh horses 
having been sent on at night. 

They drove in at the lodge-gate of 
Bellevue House, which was left ostenta- 
tiously open, and soon drew up at the 
hall door, and set many a pale face peep- 
ing from the upper windows. 

The door opened ; the respectable serv- 
ant came out with a respectful air. 

““Ts Mr. Salter at home, sir? ”’ 

‘““No, madam. Mr. Coyne is in charge 
to-day.”’ 

Lady Bassett was glad to hear that, 
and asked if she might be allowed to see 
Mr. Coyne. 

“Certainly, madam. 
once,’’ was the reply. 

Determined to enter the place, Lady 
Bassett requested her people to open the 
carriage door, and she was in the act of 
getting out when Mr. Coyne appeared, a 
little oily, bustling man, with a good- 
humored, vulgar face, liable to a subser- 
vient pucker ; he wore it directly at sight 
of a fine woman, fine clothes, fine foot- 
men, and fine horses. 

“Mr. Coyne, I believe,’’ said Lady Bas- 
sett, with a fascinating smile. 

«¢ At your service, madam.’’ 

‘*May I have a word in private with 
you, sir? ”’ 

‘Certainly, madam.”’ 

‘We have come a long way. 
horses be fed ? ”’ 

<“T am afraid,’ said the little man, 
apologetically, ‘‘I must ask you to send 
them to the inn. It is close by.’’ 

‘¢By all means.’’ (To one of the out- 
riders :) ‘‘ You will wait here for orders.”’ 

Mary Wells had been already in- 
structed to wait in the hall and look out 
sharp for Sir Charles’s keeper and nurse, 
and tell them her ladyship wanted to 
speak to them privately, and it would be 
money in their way. 

Lady Bassett, closeted with Mr. Coyne, 
began first to congratulate herself. ‘‘ Mr. 
Bassett,’’ said she, ‘‘is no friend of mine, 
but he has done me a kindness in sending 


T’ll tell him at 


May the 


Sir Charles here, when he might have 
sent him to some place where he might 
have been made worse instead of bet- 


ter. Here, I conclude, gentlemen of your — 


ability will soon cure his trifling disorder, 
will you not? ”’ 

‘‘] have good hopes, your ladyship; he 
is better to-day.”’ 

‘‘Now I dare say you could tell me to 
a month when he will be cured.’’ 

‘Oh, your ladyship exaggerates my 
skill too much.’’ 

“Three months ? ”’ 

‘‘That is a short time to give us; but 
your ladyship may rely on it we will do 
our best.’’ 

“Will you? Then I have no fear of 
the result. Oh, by-the-by, Dr. Willis 
wanted me to take a message to you, Mr. 
Coyne. He knows you by reputation.”’ 

“Indeed! Really Iwas not aware that 
my humble—’’ 

«‘Then you are better known than you 
in your modesty supposed. Let me see: 
what was the message? Oh, it was a 
peculiarity in Sir Charles he wished you 
to know. Dr. Willis has attended him 
from a boy, and he wished me to tell you 
that morphia and other sedatives have 
some very bad effects on him. I told Dr. 
Willis you would probably find that and 
every thing else out without a hint from 
him or any one else.”’ 

«Yes; but I will make a note of it, for 
all that.”’ 

‘*That is very kind of you. It will 
flatter the doctor, the more so as he has 
so high an opinion of you. But now, Mr. 
Coyne, I suppose if Iam very good, and 
promise to soothe him, and not excite him, 
I may see my hushand to-day ?”’ 

‘Certainly, madam. You have an 
order from the person who—’’ 

“‘T forgot to bring it with me. 
lied on your humanity.”’ 

“That is unfortunate. I am afraid I 
must not—’’ He hesitated, looked very 
uncomfortable, and said he would consult 
Mr. Appleton; then, suddenly puckering 
his face into obsequiousness, “‘ Would 
your ladyship like to inspect some of our 
arrangements for the comfort of our pa- 
tients ? ”’ | 


I re- 


| 
| 


A THRRIBLE 


Lady Bassett would have declined the 
proposal but for the singular play of 
countenance; she was herself all eye 
and mind, so she said, gravely, ‘‘I shall 
be very happy, sir.”’ 

Mr. Coyne then led the way, and 
showed her a large sitting-room, where 
some ladies were seated at different oc- 
cupations and amusements: they Kept 
more apart from each other than ladies 
do in general; but this was the only sign 
a far more experienced observer than 
Lady Bassett could have discovered, the 
nurses having sprung from authoritative 
into unobtrusive positions at the sound of 
Mr. Coyne’s footstep outside. 

“ What!’ said Lady Bassett; ‘are 
all these ladies—’’ She hesitated. 

‘¢Hvery one,’ said Mr. Coyne; “‘and 
some incurably.’’ 

“Oh, please let us retire; I have no 
right to gratify my curiosity. Poor 
things! they don’t seem unhappy.”’ 

‘Unhappy !”’ said Mr. Coyne. ‘‘ We 
don’t allow unhappiness here; our doctor 
is too fond of them; he is always contriv- 
ing something to please them.’’ 

At this moment Lady Bassett looked 
up and saw a woman watching her over 
the rail of a corridor on the first floor. 
She recognized the face directly. The 
woman made her a rapid signal, and 
then disappeared into one of the rooms. 

‘* Would there be any objection to our 
going upstairs, Mr. Coyne?” said Lady 
Bassett, with a calm voice and a heart 
thumping violently. 


“Oh, none whatever. I’ll conduct 
you; but then, I am afraid I must 
leave you for a time.”’ 

He showed her upstairs, blew a 
whistle, handed her over to an at- 


tendant, and bowed and smiled himself 
away grotesquely. 

Jones was the very keeper she had 
feed last visit. She flushed with joy at 
sight of bull-necked, burly Jones. “ Oh, 
Mr. Jones!’ said she, putting her hands 
together with a look that might have 
melted a hangman. 

Jones winked, and watched Mr. Coyne 
out of sight. 

““T have seen your ladyship’s maid,”’ 


laugh at Richard Bassett’s malice. 


TEMPTATION. 107 
said Jones, confidentially. ‘It is all 
right. Mr. Coyne have got the blinkers 
on. Only pass me your word not to ex- 
cite him.’’ 

“Oh no, sir, I will soothe him.’’ 
she trembled all over. 

*« Sally !’? cried Jones. 

The nurse came out of a room and 
held the door ajar; she whispered, ‘I 
have prepared him, madam; he is all 
right.”’ 

Lady Bassett, by a great effort, kept 
her feet from rushing, her heart from 
erying out with joy, and she entered the 
room. Sally closed the door like a shot, 
with a delicacy one would hardly have 
given her credit for, to judge from ap- 
pearances. 

Sir Charles stood in the middle of the 
room, beaming to receive her, but re- 
straining himself. They met: he held 
her to his heart; she wept for joy and 
grief upon his neck. Neither spoke for 
a long time. 


And 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


THEY were seated hand in hand, com- 
paring notes and comforting each other. 
Then Lady Bassett met with a great 
surprise: forgetting, or rather not 
realizing, Sir Charles’s sex and char- 
acter, she began with a heavy heart to 
play the consoler ; but after he had em- 
braced her many times with tender rap- 
ture, and thanked God for the sight of 
her, lo and behold, this doughty baronet 
claimed his rights of manhood, and, in 
spite of. his capture, his incarceration, 
and his malady, set to work to console 
her, instead of lying down to be consoled. 

‘‘My darling Bella,’’ said he, ‘‘ don’t 
you make a mountain of a mole-hill. 
The moment you told me I should be a 
father I began to get better, and to 
Of 


108 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


course I was terribly knocked over at 
first by being captured like a felon and 
clapped under lock and key; but I am 
getting over that. My head gets mud- 
dled once a day, that is all. They gave 
me some poison the first day that made 
me drunk twelve hours after; but they 
have not repeated it.’’ 

“Oh!” cried Lady Bassett, ‘‘ then 
don’t let me lose a moment. How 
could I forget ?’’ She opened the door, 
and called in Mr. Jones and the nurse. 

“Mr. Jones,’’ said she, ‘‘ the first day 
my husband came here Mr. Salter gave 
him a sedative, or something, and it 
made him much worse.’’ 

‘“It always do make ’em worse,”’ said 
Jones, bluntly. 

‘¢Then why did he give it ? ”’ 

<<Out o’ book, ma’am. His sort don’t 
see how the medicines work; but we do, 
as are always about the patient.’’ 

‘“‘Mr. Jones,’’ said Lady Bassett, ‘if 
Mr. Salter, or anybody, prescribes, it is 
you who administer the medicine.’’ 

Jones assented with a wink. Winking 
was his foible, as puckering of the face 
was Coyne’s. 

‘“Should you be offended if I were to 
offer you and the nurse ten guineas a 
month to pretend you had given him Mr. 
Salter’s medicines, and not do it ?”’ 

“Oh, that is not much to do for a 
gentleman like Sir Charles,’’ said Jones. 
“But I didn’t ought to take so much 
money for that. To be sure, I suppose, 
the lady won’t miss it.”’ 

‘Don’t be a donkey, Jones,’’ said Sir 
Charles, cutting short his hypocrisy. 
‘‘'Take. whatever you can get; only 
earn it.”’ 

“Oh, what I takes I earns.’’ 

‘© Of course;’? said Sir Charles. - ‘So 
that is settled. You have got to physic 
those flower-pots instead of me, that is 
all.’’ 

This view of things tickled Jones so 
that he roared with laughter. However, 
he recollected himself all. of a sudden, 
and stopped with ludicrous abruptness. 

He said to Lady Bassett, with homely 
kindness, ‘‘ You go home comfortable, 
my lady; you have taken the stick by 


the right end.’’ He then had the good 
sense to retire from the room. 

Then Lady Bassett told Sir Charles of 
her visit to London, and her calling on 
Mr. Rolfe. 


He looked blank at his wife calling on a - 


bachelor; but her description of the man, 
his age, and his simplicity, reconciled him 
to that; and when she told him the plan 
and order of campaign Mr. Rolfe had 
given her he approved it very earnestly. 

He fastened in particular on something 
that Mr. Rolfe had dwelt lightly on. 
‘* Dear as the sight of you is to me, sweet 
as the sound of your loved voice is to my 
ears and my heart, I would rather not 
see you again until our hopes are realized 
than jeopardize that.’’ 

Lady Bassett sighed, for this seemed 
rather morbid. Sir Charles went on: 
“So think of your own health first, and 
avoid agitations. Jl am tormented with 
fear lest that monster should take ad- 
vantage of my absence to molest you. If 
he does, leave Huntercombe. Yes, leave 
it; go to London; go, even for my sake ; 
my health and happiness depend on you; 
they cannot be much affected by any- 
thing that happens here. ‘Stone walls 
do not a prison make, nor iron bars a 
care,’ 

Lady Bassett promised, but said she 
could not keep away from him, and he 
must often write to her. She gave him 
Rolfe’s formula, and told him all letters 
would pass that praised the asylum. 

Sir Charles made a wry face. 

Lady Bassett’s wrist went round his 
neck ina moment. ‘‘Oh, Charles, dear, 
for my sake—hold a little, little candle 
to the devil. Mr. Rolfe says we must. 
Oblige me in this—I am not so noble as 
you—and then I’ll be very good and 
obedient in what your heart is set upon. 

At last Sir Charles consented. 

Then they made haste, and told each 
other everything that had happened, and 
it was late in the afternoon before they 
parted. 

Lady Bassett controlled her tears at 
parting as well as she could. 

Mr. Coyne had slyly hid himself, but 
emerged when she came down to the car- 


A THRRIBLE 


riage, and she shook him warmly by the 
hand, and he bowed at the door inces- 
santly, with his face all in a pucker, till 
the cavalcade dashed away. 


CHAPTER XXYV. 


Lapy BaAsserr timed her next visit so 
that she found Dr. Suaby at home. 

He received her kindly, and showed 
himself a master; told her Sir Charles’s 
was a mixed case, in which the fall, the 
fit, and a morbid desire for offspring: had 
all played their parts. 

He hoped a speedy cure, but said he 
counted on her assistance. There was no 
doubt what he meant. 

Oh, for one thing, he said to her, rather 
slyly, ‘‘ Coyne tells me you have been 
good enough to supply us with a hint as 
to his treatment ; sedatives are opposed 
to his idiosyncrasy.”’ 

Lady Bassett blushed high, and said 
something about Dr. Willis. 

‘*Oh, you are quite right, you and Dr. 
Willis; only you are not so very convers- 
ant with that idiosyncrasy. Why have 
you let him smoke twenty cigars every 
day of his life? the brain is accessible by 
other roads than the stomach. Well, 
we have got him down to four cigars, 
and in a month we will have him down to 
two. The effect of that, and exercise, 
and simple food, and the absence of pow- 
erful excitements—you will see. Do your 
part,’’ said he, gayly, ‘“‘we will do ours. 
He is the most interesting patient in 
the house, and born to adorn ‘society, 
though by a concurrence of unhappy cir- 
cumstances he is separated from it for a 
while.’’ 

She spent the whole afternoon with Sir 
Charles, and they dined together at the 
doctor’s private table, with one or two 
patients who were touched, but showed 
no signs of it on that occasion; for the 
good doctor really acted like oil on the 
troubled waters. 


TEMPTATION. 109 

Sir Charles and Lady Bassett corre- 
sponded, and so kept their hearts up; 
but after Rolfe’s hint the correspondence 
was rather guarded. If these letters 
were read in the asylum the curious 
would learn that Sir Charles was far 
more anxious about his wife’s condition 
than his own; but that these two patient 
persons were only waiting a certain near 
event to attack Richard Bassett with 
accumulated fury—that smoldering fire 
did not smoke by letter, but burned deep 
in both their sore and heavy, but endur- 
ing, Anglo-Saxon hearts. 

Lady Bassett wrote to Mr. Rolfe, thank- 
ing him again for his advice, and telling 
him how it worked. 

She had a very short reply from that 
gentleman. 

But about six weeks after her visit he 
surprised her a lttle by writing of his 
own accord, and asking her for a formal 
introduction to Sir Charles Bassett, and 
begging her to back a request that Sir 
Charles would devote a leisure hour or 
two to correspondence with him. ‘ Not,”’ 
said he, ‘‘ on his private affairs, but on a 
matter of general interest. I want a few 
of his experiences and observations in 
that place. I have the less scruple in 
asking it, that whatever takes him out of 
himself will be salutary.”’ 

Lady Bassett sent him the required in- 
troduction in such terms that Sir Charles 
at once consented to oblige his wife by 
obliging Mr. Rolfe. 


‘“My DEAR Srr—In compliance with 
your wish, and Lady Bassett’s, I send 
you a few desultory remarks on what I 
Seemiere: 


“Ist. The lines, 


‘Great wits to madness nearly are allied, 
And thin partitions do their bonds divide,’ 


are, in my opinion, exaggerated and un- 
true. Taking the people here as a guide, 
the insane in general appear to be people 
with very little brains, and enormous 
egotism. 

‘“My next observation is, that the 
women have far less imagination than 
the men; they cannot even realize their 


110 


own favorite delusions. For instance, 
here are two young ladies, the Virgin 
Mary and the Queen of England. How 
do they play their parts? They sit 
aloof from all the rest, with their noses 
in the air. But gauge their imagina- 
tions; go down on one knee, or both, 
and address them as a saint and a 
queen; they cannot say a word in ac- 
cordance ; yet they are cunning enough 
to see they cannot reply in character, 
so they will not utter a syllable to their 
adorers. They are like the shop-boys 
who go to a masquerade as Burleigh or 
Walsingham, and when you ask them 
who is Queen Bess’s favorite just now, 
blush, and look offended, and _ pass 
sulkily on. 

“The same class of male lunatics can 
speak in character; and this observation 
has made me doubt whether philosophers 
are not mistaken in saying that women 
generally have more imagination than 
men. Isuspect they have infinitely less ; 
and I believe their great love of novels, 
which has been set down to imagination, 
arises mainly from their want of it. You 
writers of novels supply that defect for 
them by a pictorial style, by an infinity 
of minute details, and petty aids to realiz- 
ing, all which an imaginative reader can 
do for himself on reading a bare narra- 
tive of sterling facts and incidents. 

‘‘T find a monotony in madness. So 
many have inspirations, see phantoms, 
are the victims of vast conspiracies (prin- 
cipalities and powers combined against a 
fly); their food is poisoned, their wine is 
drugged, etc., etc. 

«* These, I think, are all forms of that 
morbid egotism which is at the bottom of 
insanity. So is their antipathy for each 
other. They keep apart, because a mad- 
man is all self, and his talk is all self; 
thus egotisms clash, and an antipathy 
arises; yet it is not, I think, pure an- 
tipathy, though so regarded, but a mere 
form of their boundless egotism. 

‘Tf, in visiting an asylum, you see two 
or three different patients buttonhole a 
fourth and pour their grievances into a 
listening ear, you may safely suspect No. 
4 of—sanity. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


““On the whole, I think the doctor him- 
self, and one of his attendants, and Jones, 
a keeper, have more solid eccentricity 
and variety about them than most of 
the patients.”’ 


Extract from Letter 2, written about a 
fortnight later : 


‘*Some insane persons have a way of 
couching their nonsense in language that 
sounds rational, and has a false air of 
logical connection. Their periods seem 
stolen from sensible books, and forcibly 
fitted to incongruous bosh. By this 
means the ear is confused. and a slow 
hearer might fancy he was listening to 
sense. 

‘‘T. have secured you one example of 
this. You must know that, in the even- 
ing, | sometimes collect a few together, 


and try to get them to tell their stories. © 


Little comes of it in general but interrup- 
tions. But, one night, a melancholy Bag- 
man responded in good set terms, and all 
ina moment; one would have thought I 
had put a torch to a barrel of powder, he 
went off so quickly, in this style: 

«You ask my story : it is briefly told. 
Initiated in commerce from my earliest 
years, and traveled in the cotton trade. 
As representative of a large house in 
Manchester, I visited the United States. 

“«* Unfortunately for me, that country 
was then the chosen abode of spirits ; 
the very air was thick and humming 
with supernaturalia. Ere long’ spirit- 
voices whispered in my ear, and sug- 
gested pious aspirations at first. That 
was a blind, no doubt; for very soon 
they went on to insinuate things profane 
and indelicate, and urged me to deliver 
them in mixed companies; I forbore with 
difficulty, restrained by the early lessons 
of a pious mother, and a disinclination 
to be kicked downstairs, or’ flung out 0’ 
window. 

““«7 consulted a friend, a native of the 
country ; he said, in its beautiful Doric, 
‘“Old oss, I reckon you’d better change 
the air.’’ I grasped his hand, muttered 
a blessing, and sailed for England. 

“*«Qn ocean’s peaceful bosom the an- 


, 


is 


} 


' 
ee 


A TERRIBLE 


noyance ceased. But under this deceitful 
calm fresh dangers brooded. ‘Two doctors 
had stolen into the ship, unseen by human 
eye, and bided their time. Unable to act 
at sea, owing to the combined effect of 
wind and current, they concealed them- 
selves on deck under a black tarpaulin— 
that is to say, it had been black, but wind 
and weather had reduced it to a dirty 
brown—and there, adopting for the oc- 
casion the habits of the dormouse, the 
bear, the caterpillar, and other ephemeral 
productions, they lay torpid. But the mo- 
ment the vessel touched the quay, profit- 
ing by the commotion, they emerged, 
and signed certificates with chalk on 
my portmanteau; then vanished in the 
crowd. The Custom-house read the cer- 
tificates, and seized my luggage as con- 
traband. Iwas too old a traveler to leave 
my luggage; so then they seized me, and 
sent us both down here. (With sudden 
and short-lived fury) that old hell-hound 
at the Lodge asked them where I was 
booked for. ‘‘ For the whole journey,”’ 
said a sepulchral yoice unseen. That 
means the grave, my boys, the silent 
grave.’ 

‘‘Notwithstanding this stern decree, 
Suaby expects to turn him out cured in 
a few months. 

‘‘Miss Wieland, a very pretty girl, put 
her. arm in mine, and drew me mysteri- 
ously apart. ‘So you are collecting the 
villainies,’ said she, sotto voce. ‘It will 
take you all your time. I'll tell you mine. 
There’s a hideous old man wants me to 
marry him; and I won’t. And he has 
put me in here, and keeps me prisoner 
till I will. They are all on his side, es- 
pecially that sanctified old guy, Suaby. 
They drug my wine, they stupefy me, 
they give me things to make me naughty 
and tipsy ; but it is no use; I never will 
marry that old goat—that for his money 
and him—I’ll die first.’ 

“Of course my blood boiled; but I 
asked my nurse, Sally, and she assured 
me there was not one atom of truth in 
any part of the story. ‘The young lady 
was put in here by her mother; none too 
soon, neither.’ I asked her what she 
meant. 


‘Why, she came here with her | 


TEMPTATION. 111 


throat cut, and strapping on it. She is 
a suicidal.’ ”’ 


This correspondence led eventually to 
some unexpected results ; but [am obliged 
to interrupt it for a time, while I deal 
with a distinct series of events which be- 
gan about five weeks after Lady Bassett’s 
visit to Mr. Rolfe, and will carry the 
reader forward beyond the date we have 
now arrived at. 


It was the little dining-room at High- 
more; alow room, of modest size, plainly 
furnished. An enormous fire-place, paved 
with plain tiles, on which were placed iron 
dogs; only wood and roots were burned 
in this room. 

Mrs. Bassett had just been packed off 
to bed by marital authority; Bassett 
and Wheeler sat smoking pipes and sip- 
ping whisky-and-water. Bassett pro- 
fessed to like the smell of peat smoke 
in whisky ; what he really liked was the 
price: 

After a few silent whiffs, said Bassett, 
‘‘T didn’t think they would take it so 
quietly ; did you? ”’ 

‘Well, I really did not. But, after 
all, what can they do? They are evi- 
dently afraid to go to the Court of 
Chancery, and ask for a jury in the 
asylum ; and what else can they do?” 

‘“Humph! They might arrange an 
escape, and hide him for fourteen days; 
then we could not recapture him without 
fresh certificates ; could we?” 

‘*Certainly not.”’ 

‘* And the doors would be too well 
guarded ; not a crack for two doctors to 
creep in at.”’ 

“You go too fast. You know the law 
from me, and you are a daring man that 
would try this sort of thing; but a timid 
woman, advised by a respectable muff 
like Oldfield! They will never dream of 
such a thing.”’ 

‘‘Oldfield is not her head-man. She 
has got another adviser, and he is the 
very man to do something plucky.”’ 

‘¢T don’t know who you mean.”’ 

‘‘ Why, her lover, to be sure.”’ 

‘‘Her lover ? Lady Bassett’s lover!’’ 


112 

‘‘ Ay, the young parson.”’ 

Wheeler smiled satirically. ‘‘ You cer- 
tainly area good hater. Nothing is too 


bad for those you don’t like. If that 
Lady Bassett is not a true wife, where 
will you find one ?”’ 

‘‘She is the most deceitful jade in En- 
gland.”’ 

ht oles 

‘‘Ah! you may sneer. So you have 
forgotten how she outwitted us. Did the 
devil himself ever do a cunninger thing 
than that ? tempting a fellow into a cor- 
respondence that seemed a piece of folly 
on her part, yet it was a deep diabolical 
trick to get at my handwriting. Did you 
see her game? No more than I did. 
You chuckled at her writing letters to 
the plaintiff pendente lite. We were 
both children, setting our wits against a 
woman’s. I tell you I dread her, espe- 
cially when I see her so unnaturally quiet, 
after what we have done. When you 
hook a large salmon, and he makes a 
great commotion, but all of a sudden lies 
like a stone, be on your guard; he means 
mischief.’’ 

‘* Well,’’ said Wheeler, “‘ thisis all very 
true, but you have strayed from the 
point. What makes you think she has 
an improper attachment? ”’ 

‘‘Is it so very unnatural? He is the 
handsomest fellow about, she is the love- 
liest woman; he is dark, she is fair; and 
they are thrown together by circum- 
stances. Another thing: I have al- 
ways understood that women admire the 
qualities they don’t possess themselves— 
strength, for instance. Now this parson 
isa Hercules. He took Sir Charles up 
like a boy and carried him in his arms all 
the way from where he had the fit. Lady 
Bassett walked beside them. Rely on it, 
a woman does not see one man carry an- 
other so without making a comparison in 
favor of the strong, and against the weak. 
But what am I talking about? They 
walk like lovers, those two.”’ 

‘¢What, hand in hand? he! he!”’ 

‘No, side by side; but yet like lovers 
for all that.’’ 

“You must have a good eye.’’ 

‘*T have a good opera-gilass.”’ 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


Mr. Wheeler smoked in silence. 

“Well, but,’’ said he, after a pause, 
‘‘if this is so, all the better for you. 
Don’t you see that the lover will never 
really help her to get the husband out of 
confinement? Itis notin the nature of 
things. He may struggle with his own 
conscience a bit, being a clergyman, but 
he won’t go too far; he won’t break the 
law to get Sir Charles home, and so end 
these charming duets with his lady-love.”’ 

“By Jove, you are right!’ cried 
Bassett, convinced in his turn. ‘I say, 
old fellow, two heads are better than one. 
I think we have got the clew, between us. 
Yes, by Heaven! itisso; for the carriage 
used to'be out twice a week, but now she 
only goes about once in ten days. By- 
and-by it will be once a fortnight, then 
once a month, and the black-eyed rector 
will preach patience and resignation. Oh, 
it was a master-stroke, clapping him in 
that asylum! All we have got to do now 
is to let well alone. When she is over 
head and ears in love with Angelo she 
will come to easy terms with us, and so 
I’ll move across the way. I shall never 
be happy till I live at Huntercombe, and 
administer the estate.”’ 

The maid-servant brought him a note, 
and said it was from her mistress. Bas- 
sett took it rather contemptuously, and 
said, ‘‘ The little woman is always in a 
fidget now when you come here. She is 
all for peace.’’ He read the letter. It 
ran thus: 


‘‘ DEAREST RICHARD—I implore you to 
do nothing more to hurt Sir Charles. It 
is wicked, and it is useless. God has had 
pity on Lady Bassett, and have you pity 
on her too. Jane has just heard it from 
one of the Huntercombe servants.”’ 


** What does she mean with her ‘its’ ? 
Why, surely— Read it, you.”’ 

They looked at each other in doubt and 
amazement for some time. Then Rich- 
ard Bassett rushed upstairs, and had a 
few hasty words with his wife. 

She told him her news in plainer En- 
glish, and renewed her mild entreaties. 


He turned his back on her in the middle. 


A THRRIBLE 


He went out into the nursery, and looked 
at his child. The little fellow, a beauti- 
ful boy, slept the placid sleep of infancy. 
He leaned over him and kissed him, and 
went down to the dining-room. 

His feet came tramp, tramp, very slow- 
ly, and when he opened the door Mr. 
Wheeler was startled at the change in 
his appearance. He was pale, and his 
countenance fallen. 

“Why, what is the matter?’’ 
Wheeler. 

‘She has done us. Ah, I was wiser 
than you; I feared her. It is the same 
thing over again; a woman against two 
children. This shows how strong she is ; 
you can’t realize what she has done—even 
when you see it. An heir was wanted to 
those estates. Love cried out for one. 
Hate cried out for one. Nature denied 
one. She has cut the Gordian knot; cut 
it as boldly as the lowest woman in Hun- 
tercombe would have cut it under such a 
terrible temptation.”’ 

Oh, tor shame !’’ 

‘Think, and use your eyes.’ 

‘* My eyes have seen the lady; I think 
I see her now, kneeling like an angel over 
her husband, and pitying him for having 
knocked me down. I say her only lover 
is her husband.’’ 

‘*Oh, that was a long time ago. Time 
brings changes. You can’t take the eyes 
out of my head.’’ 

‘‘Suppose it should be only a false 
alarm ?”’ 

‘‘Is that likely ? However, I will learn. 
Whether it is or not, that child shall 
never rob mine of Bassett and Hunter- 
combe. Anything is fair against such a 
woman.”’ 


said 


CHAPTER XXVI. 


THAT very night, after Wheeler had 
gone home, Richard Bassett wrote a ca- 
joling letter to Mary Wells, asking her 
to meet him at the old place. 


TEMPTATION. 113 

When the girl got this letter she felt a 
little faint fora moment; but she knew 
the man, his treachery, and his hard 
egotism and selfishness so well, that she 
tossed the letter aside, and resolved to 
take no notice. Her trust was all in her 
mistress, for whom, indeed, she had more 
real affection than for any living creature; 
as for Richard Bassett she absolutely de- 
tested him. 

As the day wore on she took another 
view of matters: her deceiver was the 
enemy of her mistress ; she might do her 
a service by going to this rendezvous, 
might learn something from him, and 
use it against him.’’ 

So she went to the rendezvous with a 
heart full of bitter hate. 

Bassett, with all his assurance, could 
not begin his interrogatory all in a mo- 
ment. He made a sort of apology, said 
he felt he had been unkind, and he had 
never been happy since he had deserted 
ete 

She cut that short. ‘I have found a 
better than you,’’ said she. ‘“‘Ilam going 
to London very soon—to be married.’’ 

‘‘T am glad to hear it.”’ 

‘* No doubt you are.”’ 

‘‘T. mean for your sake.”’ 

‘Hor my sake? You think as little of 
meas Ido of you. Come, now, what do 
you want of me—without a lie, if you 
can 2”? 

“TI wanted to see you, and talk to you, 
and hear your prospects.”’ 


‘Well, I have told you.’’ And she 
pretended to be going. 
‘Don’t be in such a hurry. Tell us 


the news. Is it true that Lady Bassett 
is expected—”’ 

“Oh, that is no news.’’ 

“It is to me.”’ 

«<*Tain’t no news in our house. 
we have known it for months.”’ 

This took away the man’s breath for a 
minute. 

At last he said, with a great deal of 
intention : 

SEN Theis DG: talr or dark 273 

‘© As God pleases.’’ 

“T’ll bet you five pounds to one that 
itis. darkes 


Why, 


114 WORKS 

Mary shrugged her shoulders con- 
temptuously, as if these speculations 
were too childish for her. 

‘‘Tt’s my lady you want to talk about, 
is it? Il thought it was to make me a 
wedding present.’’ 

He actually put his hand in his pocket 
and gave her two sovereigns. She took 
them with a grim smile. 

He presumed on this to question her 
minutely. 

She submitted to the interrogatory. 

Only, asthe questions were not always 
delicate, and the answer was invariably 
an untruth, it may be as well to pass 
over the rest of the dialogue. Suffice it 
to say that, whenever the girl saw the 
drift of a question she hed admirably ; 
and when she did not, still she lied upon 
principle: it must be a good thing to de- 
ceive the enemy. 


Richard Bassett was now perplexed, 
and saw himself in that very position 
which had so galled Lady Bassett six 
weeks or so before. He could not make 
any advantageous move, but was obliged 
to await events. All he could do was to 
spy a little on Lady Bassett, and note 
how often she went to the asylum. 

After many days’ watching he saw 
something new. 

Mr. Angelo was speaking to her with 
a good deal of warmth, when suddenly 
she started from him, and then turned 
round upon him in a very command- 
ing attitude, and with prodigious fire. 
Angelo seemed then to address her very 
humbly. But she remained rigid. At 
last Angelo retired and left her so; but 
he was no sooner out of sight than she 
dropped into a garden seat, and, taking 
out her handkerchief, cried a long time. 

‘Why doesn’t the fool come back ?”’’ 
said Bassett, from his tower of obser- 
vation. 

He related this incident to Wheeler, 
and it impressed that worthy more than 
all he had ever said before on the same 
subject. But ina day or two Wheeler, 
who was a great gossip, and picked up 
every thing, came and told Bassett that 
the parson was looking out for a curate, 


OF CHARLES READE. 


and going to leave his living fora time, | . 
‘‘That is rath- © 


on the ground of health. 
er against your theory, Mr. Bassett,’’ 
said he. 

‘* Not a bit,’’ said Bassett. “On the 
contrary, that is just what these artful 
women do who sacrifice virtue but cling 
all the more to reputation. Iread French 
novels, my boy.”’ 

‘‘ Find ’em instructive ? ” 

“Very. They cut deeper into human 
nature than our writers dare. Her turn- 
ing away her lover now is just the act of 
what the French call a masterly woman 
—maitresse femme. She has got rid of 
him to close the mouth of scandal; that 
is her game.”’ 

‘‘Well,’”? said Wheeler, ‘‘ you certainly 
are very ingenious, and so fortified in 
your opinions that with you facts are no 
longer stubborn things; you can twist 
them all your way. If he had stayed and 
buzzed about her, while her husband was 
incarcerated, you would have found her 
guilty : he goes to Rome and leaves her, 
and therefore you find her guilty. You 
would have made a fine hanging judge in 
the good old sanguinary times.’’ 

‘“‘Tuse my eyes, my memory, and my 
reason. She is a monster of vice and 
deceit. Anything is fair against such a 
woman.”’ | 

‘“T am sorry to hear you say that,”’ 
said Wheeler, becoming grave rather 
suddenly. ‘‘A woman is a woman, and 
I tell you plainly I have gone pretty well 
to the end of my tether with you.”’ 

‘Abandon me, then,’’? said Bassett, 
doggedly; ‘‘I can go alone.” 

Wheeler was touched by this, and said, 
‘“No, no; Iam not the man to desert a 
friend; but pray do nothing rash—do 
nothing without consulting me.’’ 

Bassett made no reply. 

About a week after this, as Lady Bas- 
sett was walking sadiy in her own gar- 
den, a great Newfoundland dog ran up 
to her without any warning, and put his 
paws almost on her shoulder. 

She screamed violently, and more than 
once. 

One or two windows flew open, and 
among the women who put their heads 


A TERRIBLE 


out to see what was the matter, Mary 
Wells was the first. 

The owner of the dog instantly 
whistled, and the sportive animal ran 
to him; but Lady Bassett was a good 
deal ‘scared, and went in holding her 
hand to her side. Mary Wells hurried 
to her assistance, and she cried a little 
from nervousness when the young woman 
came earnestly to her. 

“Oh, Mary! he frightened meso. I 

did not see him coming.”’ 
_ Mr. Moss,’’ said Mary Wells, ‘‘ here’s 
a villain come and frightened my lady. 
Go and shoot his dog, you and your son ; 
and get the grooms, and fling him in the 
horse-pond directly.’’ 

‘“No!’’ said Lady Bassett, firmly. 
‘*You will see that he does not enter 
the house, that is all. Should he at- 
tempt that, then you will use force for 
my protection. Mary, come to my 
room.”’ 

When they were together alone Lady 
Bassett put both hands on the girl’s 
shoulders, and made her turn toward 
her. 

“JT think you love me, Mary?” said 
she, drinking the girl’s eyes with her 
Own. 

“Ah! that I do, my lady.”’ 


** Why did you look so pale, and your’ 


eyes flash, and why did you incite those 
poor men to— It might have led to 
bloodshed.”’ 

“Tt would; and that is what I wanted, 
my lady !’’ 

‘Oh, Mary !”’ 

“What, don’t you see ?”’ 

““No, no; I don’t want to think so. 
It might have been an accident. The 
poor dog meant no harm; it was his 
way of fawning, that was all.’’ 

‘«“The beast meant no harm, but the 
man did. He is worse than any beast 
that ever was born; he is a cruel, cun- 
ning, selfish devil; and if I had been a 
man he should never have got off alive.”’ 

** But are you sure ? ”’ 

“Quite. I was upstairs, and saw it 
all.’’ 

This was not true; she had seen noth- 
ing till her mistress screamed. 


TEMPTATION. 115 

‘‘Then—anything is fair against such 
a villain.”’ 

‘‘Of course it is.”’ 

“‘ Let me think.”’ 

She leaned her head upon her hand, 
and that intelligent face of hers quite 
shone with hard thought. 

At last, after long and intense think- 
ing, she spoke. 

““T’ll teach you to be inhuman, Mr. 
Richard Bassett,’’? said she, slowly, and 
with a strange depth of resolution. 

Then Mary Wells and she put their 
heads together in close discussion; but 
now Lady Bassett took the lead, and 
revealed to her astonished adviser ex- 
traordinary and astounding qualities. 

They had driven her to bay, and that 
is a perilous game to play with such a 
woman. 

Mary Wells found herself a child com- 
pared with her mistress, now that that 
lady was driven to put out all her 
powers. 

The conversation lasted about two 
hours: in that time the whole campaign 
was settled. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


Mary WELLS by order went down, in . 
a loose morning wrapper her mistress 
had given her, and dined in the servants’ 
hall. She was welcomed with a sort of 
shout, half ironical; and the chief butler 
said, 

‘“*Glad to see you come back to us, 
Miss Wells.’’ 

“The same to you, sir,’’ said Mary, 
with more pertness than logic; ‘‘ which 
I’m only come to take leave, for to-mor- 
row I go to London, on business.”’ 

‘‘La! what’s the business, I wonder ? ”’ 
inquired a house-maid, irreverentially. 

‘‘ Well, my business is not your busi- 
ness, Jane. However, if you want to 
know, I’m going to be married.”’ 


99 


116 


“And none too soon,’’ whispered the 
kitchen-maid to a footman. 

‘“Speak up, my dear,’’ said Mary. 
“'There’s nothing more vulgarer than 
whispering in company.’’ 

“Tsaid, ‘What will Bill Drake say 
to that?’ ”’ 

‘* Bill Drake will say he was a goose 
not to make up his mind quicker. This 
will learn him beauty won’t wait for no 
man. If he cries when I am gone, you 
lend him your apron to wipe his eyes, and 
tell him women can’t abide shilly-shally- 
ing men.”’ 

‘““That’s a hexcellent sentiment,’’ said 
John the footman, ‘‘ and a solemn warn- 
ing it is—’’ 

‘¢'To all such as footmen be,”’ said Mary. 

“We writes it in the fly-leaf of our 
Bibles accordingly,’’ said John. 

“No, my man, write it somewhere 
where you'll have a chance to read it.”’ 

This caused a laugh; and when it was 
over, the butler, who did not feel strong 
enough to chaff a lady of this caliber, 
inquired obsequiously whether he might 
venture to ask who was the happy 
stranger to carry off such a prize. 

“A civil question deserves a civil 
answer, Mr. Wright,’’ said Mary. ‘‘It 
is a sea-faring man, the mate of a ship. 
He have known me a few years longer 
than any man in these parts. Whenever 
he comes home from a voyage he tells 
me what he has made, and asks me to 
marry him. I have said ‘No’ so many 
times I’m sick and tired; so I have said 
‘Yes’ for once in away. Changes are 
lightsome, you know.’’ 

Thus airily did Mary Wells communi- 
cate her prospects, and next morning 
early was driven to the station; a cart 
had gone before with her luggage, which 
tormented the female servants terribly ; 
for, instead of the droll little servant’s 
box, covered with paper, she had a large 
lady’s box, filled with linen and clothes 
by the liberality of Lady Bassett, and a 
covered basket, and an old carpet-bag, 
with some minor packages of an unin- 
telligible character. Nor did she make 
any secret that she had money in both 
pockets; indeed, she flaunted some notes 


WORKS OF CHARLES 


READE. 


before the groom, and told him none but 
her lady knew all she had done for Sir 
Charles. ‘ But,’’ said she, “‘he is grate- 
ful, you see, and so is she.”’ 

She went off in the train, as gay as a 
lark ; but she was no sooner out of sight 
than her face changed its whole expres- 
sion, and she went up to London very 
grave and thoughtful. 

The traveling carriage was ordered at 
ten o’clock next day, and packed as for 
a journey. 

Lady Bassett took her housekeeper 
with her to the asylum. 

She had an interview with Sir Charles, 
and told him what Mr. Bassett had done, 
and the construction Mary Wells had 
put on it. 

Sir Charles turned pale with rage, and 
said he could no longer play the patient 
game. He must bribe a keeper, make 
his escape, and kill that villain. 

Lady Bassett was alarmed, and calmed 
it down. 

“It was only a servant’s construction, 
and she might be wrong; but it fright- 
ened me terribly ; and I fear it is the be- - 
ginning of a series of annoyances and 
encroachments ; and I have lost Mr. 
Angelo; he has gone to Italy. Even 
Mary Wells left me this morning to be 
married. I think I know a way to turn 
all this against Mr. Bassett; but I will 
not say it, because I want to hear what 
you advise, dearest.”’ 

Sir Charles did not leave her long in 
doubt. He said, ‘‘ There is but one way ; 
you must leave Huntercombe, and put 
yourself out of that miscreant’s way 
until our child is born.”’ 

«That would not grieve me,’’ said 
Lady Bassett. ‘‘ The place is odious to 
me, now you are not there. But what 
would censorious people say ?”’ 

«What could they say, except that 
you obeyed your husband ? ”’ 

‘*Is it a command, then, dearest ? ”’ 

‘It is a command ; and, although you 
are free, and I am a prisoner—although 
you are still an ornament to society, and 
I pass for an outcast, still I expect you 
to obey me when I assume a husband’s 
authority. 1 have not taken the com- 


A TERRIBLE 


mand of you quite so much as you used 
to say I must; buton this occasion I do. 
You will leave Huntercombe, and avoid 
that caitiff until our child is born.’’ 

“That ends all discussion,’’ said Lady 
Bassett. ‘Oh, Charles, my only regret 
is that it costs me nothing to obey you. 
But when did it ever? My king !”’ 

He had ordered her to do the very 
thing she wished to do. 

She now gave her housekeeper minute 
instructions, settled the board wages of 
the whole establishment, and sent her 
home in the carriage, retaining her own 
boxes and packages at the inn. 


Richard Bassett soon found out that 
Lady Bassett had left Huntercombe. He 
called on Wheeler and told him. Wheeler 
suggested she had gone to be near her 
husband. 
_ No,” said Bassett, ‘‘she has joined 
her lover. I wonder at our simplicity in 
believing that fellow was gone to Italy.”’ 

je enisnis, rich,’ said: Wheeler. <* A 
week ago she was guilty, and a Machi- 
‘avel in petticoats; for why? she had 
‘quarreled with her Angelo, and packed 
‘him off to Italy. Now she is guilty ; and 
‘why ? because he is not gone to Italy— 
‘not that you know whether he is or not. 
You reason like a mule. As for me, I be- 
lieve none of this nonsense—till you find 
‘them together.”’ 

** And that is just what I mean to do.”’ 
“We shall see.”’ 

‘¢ You will see.”’ 

Very soon after this a country gentle- 
‘man met Wheeler on market-day, and 
drew him aside to ask him a question. 
““Do you advise Mr. Richard Bassett 
still ? *’ 

cé Yes.’ 

“Did you set him to trespass on Lady 
Bassett’s lawn, and frighten her with a 
great dog in the present state of her 
health ?”’ 

“‘ Heaven forbid! This is the first I’ve 
heard of such a thing.”’ 

“Tam glad to hear you say that, Tom 
Wheeler. There, read that. Your client 
deserves to be flogged out of the county, 
sir.’’ And he pulled a printed paper out 


TEMPTATION. 117 
of his pocket. It was dated from the 
Royal Hotel, Bath, and had been printed 
with blanks, as follows; but a lady’s hand 
had filled in the dates. 


“©On the day of » while I was 
walking alone in my garden, Mr. Richard 
Bassett, the person who has bereaved me 
by violence of my protector, came, with- 
out leave, into my private grounds, and 
brought a very large dog; it ran to me, 
and frightened me so that I nearly faint- 
ed with alarm. Mr. Bassett was aware 
of my condition. Next day I consulted 
my husband, and he ordered me to leave 
Huntercombe Hall, and put myself be- 
yond the reach of trespassers and out- 
rage. 

** One motive has governed Mr. Bassett 
in all his acts, from his anonymous letter 
to me before my marriage—which I keep 
for your inspection, together with the 
proofs that he wrote it—to the barbarous 
Seizure of my husband upon certificates 
purchased beforehand, and this last act 
of violence, which has driven me from 
the county for a time. 

‘Sir Charles and I have often been 
your hosts and your guests; we now ask 
you to watch our property and our legal 
rights, so long as through injustice and 
cruelty my husband is a prisoner, his wife 
a fugitive.”’ 


«“There,’’ said the gentleman, “‘ these 
papers are going all round the county.” 

Wheeler was most indignant, and said 
he had never been consulted, and had 
never advised a trespass. He begged a 
loan of the paper, and took it to Bassett’s 
that very same afternoon. 

‘“So you have been acting without ad- 
vice,’’ said he, angrily; ‘‘ and a fine mess 
you have made of it.’’ And, though not 
much given to violent anger, he dashed 
the paper down on the table, and hurt his 
hand a little. Anger must be paid for, 
like other luxuries. 

Bassett read it, and was staggered a 
moment ; but he soon recovered himself, 
and said, ‘‘ What is the foolish woman 
talking about ?”’ 

He then took a sheet of paper, and said 


118 


he would soon give hera Roland for an 
Oliver. 

‘‘©Ay,’? said Wheeler, grimly, “let us 
see how you will put down the foolish 
woman. I'll smoke a cigar in the garden, 
and recover my temper.’’ 

Richard Bassett’s retort ran thus: 


‘‘T never wrote an anonymous letter in 
my life; and if I put restraint upon Sir 
Charles, it was done to protect the estate. 
Experienced physicians represented him 
homicidal and suicidal; and I protected 
both Lady Bassett and himself by the act 
she has interpreted so harshly. 

‘‘ As for her last grievance, it is imag- 
inary. My dog is gentle as a lamb. I 
did not foresee Lady Bassett would be 
there, nor that the poor dog would run 
and welcome her. She is playing a com- 
edy: the real truth is, a gentleman had 
left Huntercombe whose company is nec- 
essary to her. She has gone to join him, 
and thrown the blame very adroitly upon 

‘‘ RICHARD BASSETT.”’ 

When he had written this Bassett 
ordered his dog-cart. 

Wheeler came in, read the letter, and 
said the last suggestion in it was a libel, 
and an indictable one into the bargain. 

“ What, if it is true—true to the 
letter ? ”’ 

‘‘Kven then you would not be safe, un- 
less you could prove it by disinterested 
witnesses.”’ 

“Well, if I cannot, I consent to cut 
this sentence out. Excuse me one minute, 
I must put a few things in my carpet- 
bag.”’ 

“What! going away ? ”’ 

“Of course I am.”’ 

‘* Better give me your address, then, in 
case anything turns up.”’ 

‘‘Tf you were as sharp as you pass for 
you would know my address — Royal 
Hotel, Bath, to be sure.”’ 

He left Wheeler staring, and was back 
in five minutes with his carpet-bag and 
wraps. 

‘**Wouldn’t to-morrow morning do for 
this wild-goose chase ? ’? asked Wheeler. 

‘*No,’’ said Richard. ‘‘I’m not such a 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


fool. Catch me losing twelve hours. In 
that twelve hours they would shift their — 
quarters. Itis always so when a fool de- 
lays. I shall breakfast at the Royal 
Hotel, Bath.”’ 

The dog-cart came to the door as he 
spoke, and he rattled off to the railway. 

He managed to get to the Royal Hotel, 
Bath, at 7 A.M., took a warm bath instead | 
of bed, and then ordered breakfast ; asked 
to see the visitors’ book, and wrote a false 
name; turned the leaves, and, to his de- 
light, saw Lady Bassett’s name. 

But he could not find Mr. Angelo’s— 
name in the book. 

He got hold of Boots, and feed him 
liberally, then asked him if there was 
a handsome young parson there—very 
dark. . 

Boots could not say there was. 

Then Bassett made up his mind that 
Angelo was at another hotel, or perhaps 
in lodgings, out of prudence. 

‘‘ Lady Bassett here still? ’’ said he. 

Boots was not very sure ; would inquire — 
at the bar. Did inquire, and brought him 
word Lady Bassett had left for London 
yesterday morning. | 

Bassett ground his teeth with vexation. 

No train to London for an hour and a 
half. He took a stroll through the town 
to fill up the time. 

How often, when a man abandons or 
remits his search for a time, Fate sends 
in his way the very thing he is after, but 
has given up hunting just then! As he 
walked along the north side of a certain 
street, what should he see but the truly 
beautiful and remarkable eyes and eye- 
brows of Mr. Angelo, shining from afar. 

That gentleman was standing, in a rey- 
erie, on the steps of a small hotel. 

Bassett drew back at first, not to be 
seen. Looking round he saw he was at 
the door of a respectable house that let 
apartments. He hurried in, examined 
the drawing-room floor, took it for a 
week, paid in advance, and sent to the 
Royal for his bag. | 

He installed himself near the window, 
to await one of two things, and act ac- 
cordingly. If Angelo left the place he 
should go by the same train, and s 


A TERRIBLE 
*® 
catch the parties together; if the lady 
doubled back to Bath, or had only pre- 
tended to leave it, he should soon know 
that, by diligent watch and careful fol- 
lowing. 
He wrote to Wheeler to announce this 
first step toward success. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 


SoME days after this Mr. Rolfe received 
a line from Lady Bassett, to say she was 
at the Adelphi Hotel, in John Street. _He 
put some letters into his pocket and called 
on her directly. 

She received him warmly, and told him, 
more fully than she had by letter, how 
she had acted on his advice; then she 
told him of Richard Bassett’s last act, 
and showed him her retort. | 

He knitted his brows at first over it; 
but said he thought her proclamation 
could. do no harm. 

“ Asarule,”’ said he, ‘‘I object to flick- 
ing with a lady’s whip when I am going 
to crush, but—yes—it is able, and gives 
you a good excuse for keeping out of the 
way of annoyances till we strike the blow. 
And now I have something to consult you 
upon. May I read you some extracts 
from your husband’s letters to me?’’ 

“Oh, yes.”’ 

‘‘Worgive a novelist; but this is a new 
situation, reading a husband’s letters to 
his wife. However, I have a motive, and 
so I had in soliciting the correspondence 
with Sir Charles.’’ He then read her the 
letters that are already before the reader, 
and also the following extracts : | 


“Mr. Johnson, a broken tradesman, 
has some imagination, though not of a 
poetic kind; he is imbued with trade, 
and, in the daytime, exercises several, 
especially a butcher’s. When he _ sees 
any of us coming, he whips before the 
nearest door or gate, and sells meat. 


TEMPTATION. 119 
He sells it very cheap; the reason is, his 
friends allow him only a shilling or two 
in coppers, and as every madman is the 
center of the universe, he thinks that the 
prices of all commodities are regulated 
by the amount of specie in his pocket. 
This is his style, ‘Come, buy, buy, choice 
mutton three farthings the carcass. Re- 
tail shop next door, ma’am. Jack, serve 
the lady. Bill, tell him he can send me 
home those twenty bullocks, at three 
half-pence each—’ and so on. But at 
night he subsides into an auctioneer, 
and, with knocking down lots while 


| others are conversing, getS removed oc- 


casionally to a padded room. Some- 
times we humor him, and he sells us the 
furniture after a spirited competition, 
and debits the amounts, for cash is not 
abundant here. The other night, heated 
with business, he went on from the ar- 
ticles of furniture to the company, and 
put us all up in succession. 

‘Having a good many dislikes, he 
sometimes forgot the auctioneer in the 
man, and depreciated some lots so severe- 
ly that they had to be passed; but he 
set Miss Wieland in a chair, and des- 
canted on her beauty, good temper, 
and other gifts, in terms florid enough 
for Robins, or any other poet. Sold for 
eighteen pounds, and to a lady. This 
lady had formed a violent attachment 
to Miss W.; so next week they will be 
at daggers drawn. My turn came, and 
the auctioneer did me the honor to de- 
scribe me as ‘the lot of the evening.’ 
He told the bidders to mind what they 
were about, they might never again be 
able to secure a live baronet at a mod- 
erate price, owing to the tightness of 
the money market. Well, sir, I was 
honored with bids from several ladies ; 
but they were too timid and too honest 
to go beyond their means; my less 
scrupulous sex soared above these con- 
siderations, and I was knocked down 
for seventy-nine pounds fifteen shillings, 
amid loud applause at the spirited re- 
sult. My purchaser is a shop-keeper 
mad after gardening. Dr. Suaby has 
given him a plot to cultivate, and he 
whispered in my ear, ‘The reason I 


120 


went to a fancy price was, I can kill 
two birds with one stone with you. 
You’ll make a very good statee stuck 
up among my flowers; and you can 
hallo, and keep those plaguy sparrows 
nite 2 


‘“¢Oh, what creatures for my darling 
to live among!’ cried Lady Bassett pit- 
eously. 

Mr. Rolfe stared, and said, ‘‘ What, 
then, you are like all your sex—no sense 
of humor?” 

‘Humor! when my husband is in 
misery and degradation !”’ 

“And don’t you see that the brave 
writer of these letters is steeled against 
misery, and above degradation? Such 
men are not the mere sport of circum- 
stances. Your husband carries a soul 
not to be quelled by three months in a 
well-ordered mad-house. But I will read 
no more, since what gives me satisfac- 
tion gives you pain.”’ 

“Qh, yes, yes! Don’t let me lose a 
word my husband has ever uttered.’’ 

«Well, Pll go on; but [?’m horribly 
discouraged.”’ 

““T’m so sorry for that, sir. 
forgive me.”’ 

Mr. Rolfe 
date— 


Please 


read the letter next in 


‘*We are honored with one relic of an- 
tiquity, a Pythagorean. He has obliged 
me with his biography. He was, to use 
his own words, ‘engendered by the sun 
shining on a dunghill at his father’s 
door,’ and began his career as a flea; 
but his identity was, somehow, shifted 
to a boy of nine years old. He has had 
a long spell of humanity, and awaits the 
great change—which is to turn him toa 
bee. It will not find him unprepared ; he 
has long practiced humming, in anticipa- 
tion. A faithful friend, called Caifyn, 
used to visit him every week. Caffyn 
died last year, and the poor Pythago- 
rean was very lonely and sad; but, two 
months ago, he detected his friend in the 
butcher’s horse, and is more than con- 
soled, for he says, ‘Caffyn comes six 
times a week now, instead of once.’ ”’ 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


. 

‘‘“Poor soul!’’ said Lady Bassett. 
‘“What a strange world for him to 
be living in. It seems like a dream.”’ 

‘There is something stranger coming 
in this last letter.’’ 


‘“‘T have at last found one madman 
allied to Genius. It has taken me a 
fortnight to master his delusion, and to 
write down the vocabulary he has in- 
vented to describe the strange monster 
of his imagination. All the words I 
write in italics are his own. 

‘Mr. Williams says that a machine 
has been constructed for malignant pur- 
poses, which machine is an a@r-loom. It 
rivals the human machine in this, that it 
can operate either on mind or matter. It 
was invented, and is worked, by a gang 
of villains superlatively skillful in pneu- 
matic chemistry, physiology, nervous 
influence, sympathy, and the higher 
metaphysic, men far beyond the im- 
mature science of the present era, which, 
indeed, is a favorite subject of their ridi- 
cule. 

“The gang are seven in number, but 
Williams has only seen the four highest: 
Bill, the King, a master of the art 
of magnetic tmpregnation ; Jack, the 
schoolmaster, the short-hand writer of 
the gang; Sr Archy, Chief Liar to the 
Association; and the glove-woman, so 
called from her always wearing cotton 
mittens. This personage has never been 
known to speak to any one. 

“The materials used in the air-loom by 
these pneumatic adepts are infinite; but 
principally effluvia of certain metals, 
poisons, soporific scents, etc. 

‘« The principal effects are: 

“Ist. EVENT-WORKING.—This is done 
by magnetic manipulation of kings, em- 
perors, prime ministers, and others; so 
that, while the world is fearing and ad- 
miring them, they are, in reality, mere 
puppets played by the workers of the 
air-loom. 

2d. Cutting SOUL FROM SENSE.— 
This is done by diffusing the magnetic 
warp from the root of the nose under 
the base of the skull, till it forms a 
veil ; so that the sentiments of the heart 


A TERRIBLE 


can have no communication with the 
operations of the intellect. 

“3d. Kirinc.—As boys raise a kite in 
the air, so the air-loom can lift an idea 
into the brain, where it floats and undu- 
lates for hours together. The victim can- 
not get rid of an idea so insinuated. 

‘4th. LOBSTER-CRACKING.—An exter- 
nal pressure of the magnetic atmosphere 
surrounding the person assailed. Wil- 
liams has been so operated on, and says 
he felt as if he was grasped by an enor- 
mous pair of nut-crackers with teeth, and 
subjected to a piercing pressure, which 
he still remembers with horror. Death 
sometimes results from Lobster-cracking. 

‘5th. LENGTHENING THE BRAIN.—AS 
the cylindrical mirror lengthens the 
countenance, so these assailants find 
means to elongate the brain. This dis- 
torts the ideas, and subjects the most 
serious are made silly and ridiculous. 

6th. THOUGHT-MAKING.— While one 
of these villains sucks at the brain of the 
assailed, and extracts his existing senti- 
ments, another will press into the va- 
cuum ideas very different from his real 
thoughts. Thus his mind is physically 
enslaved.”’ 


Then Sir Charles goes on to say: 


‘Poor Mr. Williams seems to me an 
inventor wasted. I thought I would try 
and reason him out of his delusion. I 
asked if he had ever seen this gang and 
their machine. 

‘‘He said yes, they operated on him 
this morning. ‘Then show them me,’ 
said I. ‘Young man,’ said he, satir- 
ically, ‘do you think these assassins, 
and their diabolical machine, would be 
allowed to go on, if they could be laid 
hands on so easily? The gang are fertile 
in disguise ; the machine operates at con- 
siderable distances.’ 

“To drive him into a corner, I said, 
‘Will you give me a drawing of it?’ He 
seemed to hesitate, so I said, ‘If you can 
not draw it, you never saw it, and never 
will.’ He assented to that, and I was 
vain enough to think I had staggered 
him; but yesterday he produced the in- 


TEMPTATION. 121 


closed sketch and explanation. After 
this I sadly fear he is incurable. 

‘‘There are three sane patients in this 
asylum, besides myself. I will tell you 
their stories when you come here, which 
I hope will be soon; for the time agreed 
on draws near, and my patience and self- 
control are sorely tried, as day after 
day rolls by, and sees me still in a mad- 
house.”’ 


‘‘There, Lady Bassett,’ said Mr. 
Rolfe. ‘‘And now for my motive in 
reading these letters. Sir Charles may 
still have a crotchet, an inordinate de- 
sire for an heir; but, even if he has, the 
writer of these letters has nothing to fear 
from any jury; and, therefore, lam now 
ready to act. I propose to go down to 
the asvlum to-morrow, and get him out 
as quickly as I can.”’ 

Lady Bassett uttered an ejaculation of 
joy. Then she turned suddenly pale, and 
her countenance fell. She said nothing. 

Mr. Rolfe was surprised at this, since, at 
their last meeting, she, was writhing at 
her inaction. He began to puzzle himself. 
She watched him keenly. He thought 
to himself, ‘‘ Perhaps she dreads the ex- 
citement of meeting—for herself.’’ 

At last Lady Bassett asked him how 
long it would take to liberate Sir Charles. 

‘“ Not quite a week, if Richard Bassett 
is well advised. If he fights desperately 
it may take a fortnight. In any case I 
don’t leave the work an hour till it is 
done. I can delay, and I can fight; but 
I never mix the two. Come, Lady Bas- 
sett, there is something on your mind 
you don’t like to say. Well, what does 
it matter? I will pack my bag, and 
write to Dr. Suaby that he may expect 
me soon; but I will wait till I get a line 
from you to go ahead. Then I’ll go down 
that instant and do the work.”’ 

This proposal was clearly agreeable to 
Lady Bassett, and she thanked him. 

“You need not waste words over it,’’ 
said he. ‘*‘ Write one word, ‘act!’ That 
will be the shortest letter you ever 
wrote.”’ 

The rest of the conversation is not 
worth recording. 


122 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


————S SS 
Tama THSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSSSE 
UTS ATH LUnann see ca TT TTTTRAAT TAY 

ay 


= Vile i 5 can H 
A il 


EXPLANATION OF THE AIR-LOOM. 


a, a.—Top of the apparatus, called by the assassins ‘‘ Air-Loom Machine,’’ being as 
a large table. 


6, 6.—The metals which the workers grasp to deaden the sympathy. 

c.—The place where the pneumaticians sit to work the loom. 

d.—Something like piano-forte keys, which open the tube-valves within the air-loom, 
to spread or feed the warp of magnetic fluid. 

e, e.—Levers, by the management of which the assailed is wrenched, stagnated, and 
lobster-cracked, etc. 

G.—Seemingly drawers, etc. Probably they contain crude materials. 

H.—The cluster of upright open tubes or cylinders, and by the assassins termed their 
musical glasses, which I perceived when they were endeavoring to burst 
my person by exploding the interior of the coating of my trunk. ~ 

I.—Apparatus standing on air-loom ; use unknown to me. 

O.—The barrels for supplying the ‘‘famous goose-neck retorts ’’ with distilled gases, 
as well poisoned as magnetic. 

S.—The warp of magnetic fluid, reaching between the person impregnated with such 
fluid and the air-loom magnets by which it is prepared; which, being a 
multiplicity of fine wires of fluids, form the sympathetic streams of attrac- 


tion, repulsion, etc., as putting the different poles of the common magnet 


to objects operates, and by which sympathetic warps the assailed object 
is affected at pleasure; as by opening a vitriolic gas valve he becomes tor- 
tured by the fluid within him, becoming agitated with the corrosion through 
all his frame; and so on in all their various modes of attacking the human 
body and mind. I never saw this warp, but the assassins admit that when 
heated it becomes luminous and visible to them for some yards from the 
loom, as a weakish rainbow. 


X.—The assailed person at the distance of several hundred feet. 


Y.—One of the gang working the air-loom, and in the act of lobster-cracking the 
person represented by the figure X. 


A TERRIBLE 


Mr. Rolfe instructed a young solicitor 
minutely, packed his bag, and waited. 

But day after day went by, and the 
order never came to act. 

Mr. Rolfe was surprised at this, and 
began to ask himself whether he could 
have been deceived in this lady’s affection 
for her husband. But he rejected that. 
Then he asked himself whether it might 
havecooled. He had known a very short 
incarceration produce that fatal effect. 
Both husband and wife interested him, 
and he began to get irritated at the 
delay. 

Sir Charles’s letters made him think 
they had already wasted time. 

At last a letter came from Gloucester 
Place. 


‘© Will my kind friend now Act? 
‘‘ Gratefully, 
é¢ Baths = DASSHEE.. 


Mr. Rolfe, upon this, cast his discon- 
tent to the winds and started for Belle- 
vue House. 


On the evening of that day a surgeon 
called Boddington was drinking tea with 
his wife, and they were talking rather 
disconsolately; for he had left a fair 
business in the country, and, though a 
gentleman of undoubted skill, was mak- 
ing his way very slowly in London. 

The conversation was agreeably inter- 
rupted by a loud knock at the door. 

A woman had come to say that he was 
wanted that moment for a lady of title in 
Gloucester Place, hard by. 

«T will come,”’ said he, with admirably 
affected indifference ; and, as soon as the 
woman was out of sight, husband and 
wife embraced each other. 
® «Pray God it may all go well, for your 
sake and hers, poor lady.’’ 

Mr. Boddington hurried to the number 
in Gloucester Place. The door was opened 
by the char-woman. 

He asked her with some doubt if that 
was the house. 

The woman said yes, and she believed 
it was a surprise. The lady was from the 
country, and was looking out for some 
servants. 


THEMPTATION. 123 
This colloquy was interrupted by an 
intelligent maid, who asked, over the 
balusters, if that was the medical man ; 
and, on the woman’s saying it was, 
begged him to step upstairs at once. 

He found his patient attended only by 
her maid, but she was all discretion and 
intelligence. She said he had only to di- 
rect her, she would do anything for her 
dear mistress. 

Mr. Boddington said a single zealous 
and intelligent woman, who could obey 
orders, was as good as a number, or bet- 
ter. 

He then went gently to the bedside, 
and his experience told him at once that 
the patient was in labor. 

He told the attendant so, and gave her 
his directions. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


Mr. KOuFE reached Bellevue House in 
time to make a hasty toilet, and dine 
with Dr. Suaby in his private apart- 
ments. 

The other guests were Sir Charles 
Bassett, Mr. Hyam—a meek, sorrowful 
patient—an Exquisite, and Miss Wieland. 

Dr. Suaby introduced him to every- 
body but the Exquisite. 

Mr. Rolfe said Sir Charles Bassett and 
he were correspondents. 

““So I hear. He tells you the secrets 
of the prison-house, eh? ”’ 

‘*The humors of the place, you mean.”’ 

“Yes, he hasa good eye for character. 
I suppose he has dissected me along with 
the rest ? ’’ 

‘* No, no; he has only dealt with the 
minor eccentricities. His pen failed at 
you. ‘ You must come and see the doc- 
tor,’ he said. So here I am.”’ 

‘©QOh,’’ said the doctor, “if your wit 
and his are both to be leveled at me, I 
had better stop your mouths. Dinner! 
dinner! Sir Charles, will you take Miss 


124 


Wieland ? Sorry we have not another 
lady to keep you company, madam.”’ 

‘«“Are you? Then I’m not,’’ said the 
lady smartly. 

The dinner passed like any other, only 
Rolfe observed that Dr. Suaby took every 
fair opportunity of drawing the pluckless 
Mr. Hyam into conversation, and that he 
coldly ignored the Exquisite. 

*‘T have seen that young man about 
town, I think,’’ said Mr. Rolfe. ‘‘ Where 
was it, I wonder ?”’ 

‘The Argyll Rooms, or the Casino, 
probably.”’ 

Sinank “you;) doctor!) (Obs, (i gorzou. 
you owed me one. He is no favorite of 
yours.”’ 

‘Certainly not. 
him medicinally.’’ 

‘* Medicinally ? 
layman.’’ 

‘To flirt with Miss Wieland. Flirting 
does her good.’’ 

‘*¢ Medicine embraces a wider range than 
I thought.”’ 

‘““No doubt. You are always talking 
about medicine ; but you know very lhttle, 
begging your pardon.’’ 

‘“That is the theory of compensation. 
When you know very little about a thing 
you must talk a great deal about it. 
Well, I’m here for instruction ; thirst- 
ing for it:’’ 

“All the better; we'll teach you to 
drink deep ere you depart.’’ 

‘*All right: but not of your favorite 
Acetate of Morphia; because that is the 
draught that takes the reason prisoner.”’ 

‘‘Tt’s no favorite of mine. Indeed, ex- 
perience has taught me that all sedatives 
excite ; if they soothe at first, they excite 
next day. My antidotes to mental ex- 
citement are packing in lukewarm water, 
and, best of all, hard bodily exercise and 
the perspiration that follows it. To put 
it shortly—prolonged bodily excitement 
antidotes mental excitement.’’ 

‘‘T’ll take a note of that. It is the 
wisest thing I ever heard from any 
learned physician.”’ 

“Yet many a learned physician knows 
it. But youare a little prejudiced against 
the faculty.’’ 


And I only invited 


That’s too deep for a 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


‘Only in their business. They are de- 
lightful out of that. But, come now, 
nobody hears us —confess, the system 
which prescribes drugs, drugs, drugs at 
every visit and in every case, and does 
not give a severe selection of esculents 
the first place, but only the second or 
third, must be rotten at the core. Don’t 
you despise a layman’s eye. All the pro- 
fessions want it.”’ 

“Well, you are a writer; publish a 
book, call it Medicina laici, and send me 


a copy.’ 
“To slash in the Lancet? Well, Il 
will: when novels cease to pay and 


truth begins to.’’ 

In the course of the evening Mr. Rolfe 
drew Dr. Suaby apart, and said, ‘‘ I must 
tell you frankly, I mean to relieve you of 
one of your inmates.”’ 

‘*Only one? Iwas in hopes you would 
relieve me of all the sane people. They 
say you are ingenious at it. All I know 
is, L can’t get rid of an inmate if the per- 
son who signed the order resists. Now, 
for instance, here’s a Mrs. Hallam came 
here unsound: religious delusion. Has 
been cured two months. I have reported 
her so to her son-in-law, who signed the 
order; but he will not discharge her. He 
is vicious, She scriptural; bores him about 
eternity. Then I wrote to the Commis- 
sioners in Lunacy; but they don’t like 
to strain their powers, so they wrote to 
the affectionate son-in-law, and he politely 
declines to act. Sir Charles Bassett the 
same: three weeks ago I reported him 
cured, and the detaining relative has not 
even replied to me.’’ 

*“Got a copy of your letter ? ”’ 

“Of course. But what if I tell you 
there is a gentleman here who never 
had any business to come, yet he is ag 
much a fixture as the grates. I took 
him blindfold along with the house. I 
signed a deed, and it is so stringent I 
can’t evade one of my predecessor’s en- 
gagements. This old rogue committed 
himself to my predecessor’s care, under 
medical certificates ; the order he signed 
himself.”’ 

*« Tllegal, you know.’’ 

‘“Of course ; but where’s the remedy ? 


NL ee 


A THRRIBLE 


The person who signed the order must 
rescind it. But this sham lunatic won’t 
rescind it. Altogether the tenacity of an 
asylum is prodigious. The statutes are 
written with bird-lime. Twenty years 
ago that old Skinflint found the rates and 
taxes intolerable ; and doesn’t everybody 
find them intolerable ? To avoid these 
rates and taxes he shut up his house, cap- 
tured himself, and took himself here; and 
here he will end his days, excluding some 
genuine patient, unless you sweep him 
into the street for me.’’ 

«<Sindbad, I will try,”’ said Rolfe, 
solemnly; “but I must begin with Sir 
Charles Bassett. By-the-by, about: his 
crotchet ? ”’ 

“Oh, he has still an extravagant desire 
for children. But the cerebral derange- 
ment is cured, and the other, standing by 
itself, is a foible, not a mania. It is only 
a natural desire in excess. If they 
brought me Rachel merely because she 
had said, ‘Give me children, or I die,’ 
and I found her a healthy woman in other 
respects, | should object to receive her on 
that score alone.”’ 

‘You are deadly particular—compared 
with some of them,”’ said Rolfe. 

That evening he made an appointment 
with Sir Charles, and visited him in his 
room at 8 A.M. He told him he had seen 
Lady Bassett in London, and, of course, 
he had to answer many questions. He 
then told him he came expressly to effect 
his liberation. 

‘‘T am grateful to you, sir,’’ said Sir 
Charles, with a suppressed and manly 
emotion. 

“Here are my instructions from Lady 
Bassett; short, but to the point.”’ 

‘“ May I keep that ?”’ 

SV hy, of course. 

Sir Charles kissed his wife’s line, and 
put the note in his breast. 

‘The first step,’’ said Rolfe, ‘‘is to cut 
you in two. That is soon done. You 
must copy in your own hand, and then 
sign, this writing.’? And he handed him 
a paper. 


‘“f, Charles Dyke Bassett, being of 
sound mind, instruct James Sharpe, of 


TEMPTATION. 125 
Gray’s Inn, my Solicitor, to sue the per- 
son who signed the order for my incar- 
ceration—in the Court of Common Pleas ; 
and to take such other steps for my re- 
lief as may be advised by my counsel— 
Mr. Francis Rolfe.”’ 


‘eHixcuse meé,“isaid: Sir, Charles. “if, I 
make one objection. Mr. Oldfield has 
been my solicitor for many years. I fear 
it will hurt his feelings if I intrust the 
matter to a stranger. Would there be 
any objection to my inserting Mr. Old- 
field’s name, sir ? ”’ 

“Only this: he would think he knew 
better than I do; and then I, who know 
better than he does, and am very vain 
and arrogant, should throw up the case 
in a passion, and go back to my MS:.; 
and humdrum Oldfield would go to 
Equity instead of law; and all the costs 
would fall on your estate instead of on 
your enemy; and you would be here 
eighteen months instead of eight or ten 
days. No, Sir Charles, you can’t mix 
champagne and ditch-water; you can’t 
make Invention row in a boat with 
Antique Twaddle, and you mustn’t ask 
me to fight your battle with a blunt 
knife, when I have got a sharp knife 
that fits my hand.’’ 

Mr. Rolfe said this with more irritation 
than was justified, and revealed one of 
the great defects in his character. 

Sir Charles saw his foible, smiled, and 
said, ‘‘I withdraw a proposal which I 
see annoys you.’’ He then signed the 
paper. 

Mr. Rolfe broke out all smiles directly, 
and said, ‘‘ Now you arecut in two. One 
you is here; but Sharpe is another you. 
Thus, one you works out of the asylum, 
and one in, and that makes all the differ- 
ence. Compare notes with those who 
have tried the other way. Yet, simple 
and obvious as this is, would you believe 
it, | alone have discovered this method ; 
I alone practice it.” 

He sent his secretary off to London 
at once, and returned to Sir Charles. 
‘“The authority will be with Sharpe at 
2:30. He will be at Whitehall 3:15, and 
examine the order. He will take the 


126 WORKS 
writ out at once, and if Richard Bassett 
is the man, he will serve it on him to- 
morrow in good time, and send one of 
your grooms over here on horseback 
with the news. We serve the writ per- 
sonally, because we have shufflers to deal 
with, and I will not give them a chance. 
Now I must go and write a lie or two for 
the public; and then inspect the asylum 
with Suaby. Before post-time I will 
write to a friend of mine who is a Com- 
missioner of Lunacy, one of the strong- 
minded ones. We may as well have two 
strings to our bow.” 

Sir Charles thanked him gracefully, 
and said, “It is a rare thing, in this 
selfish world, to see one man _ interest 
himself in the wrongs of another, as you 
are good enough to do in mine.’’ 

“¢Oh,’’ said Rolfe, ‘‘all work and no 
play makes Jack a dull boy. My busi- 
ness is Lying; and I drudge at it. So to 
escape now and then to the play-ground 
of Truth and Justice is a great amuse- 
ment and recreation to poor me. Be- 
sides, it gives me fresh vigor to replunge 
into Mendacity; and that’s the thing 
that pays.’”’ 

With this simple and satisfactory ex- 
planation he rolled away. 

Leaving, for the present, matters not 
essential to this vein of incident, 1 jump 
to what occurred toward evening. 

Just after dinner the servant who 
waited told Dr. Suaby that a man had 
walked all the way from Huntercombe 
to see Sir Charles Bassett. 

“Poor fellow !’’ said Dr..Suaby; ‘*1 
should like to see him. Would you mind 
receiving him here ?”’ 

yO) reca teyige 

‘*On second thoughts, James, you had 
better light a candle in the next room— 
in case.’’ 

A heavy clatter was heard, and the 
burly figure of Moses Moss entered the 
room. Being bareheaded, he saluted 
the company by pulling his head, and 
it bobbed. He was a little dazzled by 
the lights at first, but soon distinguished 
Sir Charles, and his large countenance 
beamed with simple and _ affectionate 
satisfaction. 


OF CHARLES 


READE. 


“How d’ye do, Moss?” said Sir 
Charles. 

“Pretty well, thank ye, sir, in my 
body, but uneasy in my mind. There 
be a trifle too many rogues afoot to 
please me. However, I told my mistress 
this morning, says I, ‘ Before I puts up 
with this here any longer, I must go over 
there and see him; for here’s so many 
lies a-cutting about,’ says I, ‘ I’m fairly 
mazed.’ So, if you please, Sir Charles, 
will you be so good as to tell me out of 
your own mouth, and then I shall know: 
be you crazy or bain’t you—ay or no ?”’ 

Suaby and Rolfe had much ado not to 
laugh right out; but Sir Charles said, 
gravely, he was not crazy. ‘* Do I look 
crazy, Moss? ”’ 

“That ye doan’t; you look twice the 
man you did. Why, your cheeks did use 
to be so pasty like; now you’ve got a 
color—but mayhap ”’ (casting an eye on 
the decanters) ‘‘ye’re flustered a bit wi’ 
Ne bell Fah ag 

‘““No, no,’’ said Rolfe, ““we have not 
commenced our nightly debauch yet; 
only just done dinner.’’ 

‘““Then there goes another. This will 
be good news to home. Dall’d if 1 would 
not ha’ come them there thirty miles on 
all-fours for’t. But, sir, if so be you are 
not crazy, please think about coming 
home, for things ain’t as they should 
be in our parts. My lady she is away 
for her groaning, and partly for fear of 
this very Richard Bassett; and him and 
his lawyer they have put it about as you 
are dead in law; that is the word: and 
so the servants they don’t know what to 
think; and the village folk are skeared 
with his clapping four brace on ’em in 
jail: and Joe and I, we wants to fight 
un, but my dame she is timorous, and 
won't let us, because of the laayer. And 
th’ upshot is, this here Richard Bassett 
is master after a manner, and comes on 
the very lawn, and brings men with a 
pole measure, and uses the place as his’n 
mostly ; but our Joe bides in the Hall 
with his gun, and swears he’ll shoot him 
if he sets foot in the house. Joe says he 
have my lady’s leave and license so to do, 
but not outside.’’ 


—_ 


A TERRIBLE 


Sir Charles turned very red, and was 
breathless with indignation. 

Dr. Suaby looked uneasy, and said, 
*‘ Control yourself, sir.’’ 

“Tam not going to control myself,”’ 
cried Rolfe, in a rage. ‘‘ Don’t you take 
it to heart, Sir Charles. It shall not last 
long.’ 

roeAthe 1? 

‘*Dr. Suaby, can you lend me a gig or 
a dog-cart, with a good horse ? ”’ 

“Yes. Ihave got a WONDERFUL road- 
ster, half Irish, half Norman.”’ 

«Then, Mr. Moss, to-morrow you and 
I go to Huntercombe: you shall show me 
this Bassett, and we will give him a 
pill.?’ 

‘‘Meantime,’’ said Dr. Suaby, “I take 
a leaf out of your Medicina laici, and pre- 
scribe a hearty supper, a quart of ale, 
and a comfortable bed to Mr. Moss. 
James, see him well taken care of. Poor 
man!’ said he, when Moss had retired. 
“What simplicity! what good sense! 
what ignorance of the world! what feu- 
dality, if I may be allowed the expres- 
sion.”’ 

Sir Charles was manifestly discom- 
posed, and retired to bed early. 

Rolfe drove off with Moss at eight 
o’clock, and was not seen again all day. 
Indeed, Sir Charles was just leaving Dr. 
Suaby’s room when he came in rather 
tired, and would not say a word till they 
gave him a cup of tea: then he bright- 
ened up and told his story. 

‘We went to the railway to meet 
Sharpe. The muff did not come nor send 
by the first train. His clerk arrived by 
the second. We went to Huntercombe 
village together, and on the road I gave 
him some special instructions. Richard 
Bassett not at home. We used a little 


bad language and threw out a skirmisher 


—Moss, to wit—to find him. Moss dis- 
covered him on your lawn, planning a 
new arrangement of the flower beds, 
with Wheeler looking over the boundary 
wall. 

‘*We went up to Bassett, and the clerk 
served his copy of the writ. He took it 
quite coolly; but when he saw at whose 
suit it was he turned pale. He recovered 


TEMPTATION. 127 
himself directly, though, and burst out 
laughing. ‘Suit of Sir Charles Bassett. 
Why, he can’t sue: he is civiliter mor- 
tuus: mad asa March hare: in confine- 
ment.’ Clerk told him he was mistaken ; 
Sir Charles was perfectly sane. ‘ Good- 
day, sir.” So then Bassett asked him to 
wait a little. He took the writ away, 
and showed it Wheeler, no doubt. He 
came back, and blustered, and said, 
‘Some other person has instructed you: 
you will get yourself into trouble, I fear.’ 
The little clerk told him not to alarm 
himself; Mr. Sharpe was instructed by 
Sir Charles Bassett, in his own handwrit- 
ing and signature, and said, ‘ Itis not my 
business to argue the case with you. 
You had better take the advice of coun- 
sel.2 ‘Thank you,’ said Bassett; ‘that 
would be wasting a guinea.’ ‘A good 
many thousand guineas have been lost 
by that sort of economy,’ says the little 
clerk, solemnly. Oh, and he told him Mr. 
Sharpe was instructed to indict him for a 
trepass if he ever came there again; and 
handed him a written paper to that ef- 
fect, which we two had drawn up at the 
station; and so left him to his reflec- 
tions. We went into the house, and 
called the servants together, and told 


‘them to keep the rooms warm and the 


beds aired, since you might return any 
day. 

Upon this news Sir Charles showed no 
premature or undignified triumph, but 
some natural complacency, and a good 
deal of gratitude. 

The next day was blank of events, but 
the next after Mr, Rolfe received a let- 
ter containing a note addressed to Sir 
Charles Bassett. Mr. Rolfe sent it to 
him. 


StiR—I am desired to inform you that 
I attended Lady Bassett last night, when 
she was safely delivered of ason. Have 
seen her again this morning. Mother 
and child are doing remarkably well. 
‘*W. BoDDINGTON, Surgeon, 
17 Upper Gloucester Place.”’ 


Sir Charles cried, ‘“‘ Thank God! thank 
God!’? He held out the paper to Mr. 


128 


Rolfe, and sat down, overpowered by 
tender emotions. 

Mr. Rolfe devoured the surgeon’s letter 
at one glance, shook the baronet’s hand 
eloquently, and went away softly, leav- 
ing him with his happiness. 

Sir Charles, however, began now to 
pine for liberty ; he longed so to join his 
wife and see his child, and Rolfe, observ- 
ing this, chafed with impatience. He 
had calculated on Bassett, advised by 
Wheeler, taking the wisest course, and 
discharging him on the spot. He had 
also hoped to hear from the Commis- 
sioner of Lunacy. But neither event 
took place. 

They could have cut the Gordian knot 
by organizing an escape: Giles and others 
were to be bought to that: but Dr. 
Suaby’s whole conduct had been so kind, 
generous, and confiding, that this was out 
of the question. Indeed, Sir Charles had 
for the last month been there upon 
parole. 

Yet the thing had been wisely planned, 
as will appear when I come to notice the 
advice counsel had given to Bassett in 
this emergency. But Bassett would not 
take advice: he went by his own head, 
and prepared a new and terrible blow, 
which Mr. Rolfe did not foresee. 

But meantime an unlooked-for and 
accidental assistant came into the asy- 
lum, without the least idea Sir Charles 
was there. 

Mrs. Marsh, early in her married life, 
converted her husband to religion, and 
took him about the country preaching. 
She was in earnest, and had a vein of 
natural eloquence that really went 
straight to people’s bosoms. She was 
certainly a Christian, though an eccen- 
tric one. Temper being the last thing to 
yield to Gospel light, she still got into 
rages; but now she was very humble 
and penitent after them. 

Well, then, after going about doing 
good, she decided to settle down and do 
good. As for Marsh, he had only to 
obey. Judge for yourself: the mild, 
gray-haired vicar of Calverly, who now 
leaned on la Marsh as on a staff, thought 
it right at the beginning to ascertain 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


that she was not opposing her husband’s 
views. He put a query of this kind as 
delicately as possible. 

‘*My husband !’’ cried she. ‘If he re- 
fused to go to heaven with me, I’d take 
him there by the ear.’’ And her eye 
flashed with the threat. 

Well, somebody told this lady that Mr. 
Vandeleur was ruined, and in Dr. Suaby’s 
asylum, not ten miles from her country- 
seat. This intelligence touched her. She 
contrasted her own happy condition, both 
worldly and spiritual, with that of this 
unfortunate reprobate, and she felt bound 
to see if nothing could be done for the 
poor wretch. A timid Christian would 
have sent some man to do the good work ; 
but this was a lion-like one. So she 
mounted her horse, and taking only her 
groom with her, was at Bellevue in no 
time. 

She dismounted, and said she must 
speak to Dr. Suaby, sent in her card, and 
was received at once. 

“You have a gentleman here called 
Vandeleur ? ”’ 

The doctor looked disappointed, but 
bowed. 

‘‘T wish to see him.’’ 

** Certainly, madam.—James, take Mrs. 


.| Marsh into a sitting-room, and send Mr. 


Vandeleur to her.”’ : 

‘* He is not violent, is he?” said Mrs. 
Marsh, beginning to hesitate when she 
saw there was no opposition. 

““ Not at all, madam—the Pink of Po- 
liteness. If you have any money about 
you, it might be as well to confide it to 
me.”’ 

«What, will he rob me? ”’ 

‘¢Oh, no: much too well conducted : 
but he will most likely wheedle you out of 
ithe 

“No fear of that, sir.’’ 
lowed James. 

He took her to a room commanding the 
lawn. She looked out of the window, and 
saw several ladies and gentlemen walk- 
ing at their ease, reading or working in 
the sun. 

‘*Poor things!’ she thought; “‘ they 
are not so very miserable: perhaps God 
comforts them by ways unknown to us. 


And she fol- 


A TERRIBLE 


I wonder whether preaching would do 
them any good? I should like to try. 
But they would not let me; they lean 
on the arm of flesh.’’ 

Her thoughts were interrupted at last 
by the door opening gently, and in came 
Vandeleur, with his graceful panther-like 
step, and a winning smile he had put on 
for conquest. 

He stopped; he stared; he remained 
motionless and astounded. 


At last he burst out, ‘“‘Somer— Was 
it me you wished to see ?”’ 
** Yes,’’ said she, very kindly. ‘I 


came to see you for old acquaintance. 
You must call me Mrs. Marsh now ; lam 
married.’’ 

By this time he had quite recovered 
himself, and offered her a chair with in- 
gratiating zeal. 

“Sit down by me,”’ said she, as if she 
was petting a child. ‘‘ Are you sure you 
remember me ?”’ 

Says the Courtier, ‘‘ Who could forget 
you that had ever had the honor—’’ 

Mrs. Marsh drew back with sudden 
hauteur. ‘“‘I did not come here for 
folly,’? said she. Then, rather naively, 
‘*T begin to doubt your being so very 
mad.”’ 

‘¢Mad? No, of course I am not.’’. 

‘Then what brings you here ? ”’ 

‘« Stumped.’’ 

«What, have I mistaken the house? 
Is it a jail? ”’ 

E-Oh, no!) Pils tell “yours You jsee. 1 
was dipped pretty deep, and duns after 
me, and the Derby my only chance ; so I 
put the pot on. But a dark horse won: 
the Jews knew I was done: so now it was 
a race which should take*me. Sloman 
had seven writs out: I was in a corner. 
I got a friend that knows every move to 
sign me into this asylum. They thought 
it was all up then, and he is bringing 
them to a shilling in the pound.’’ 

Before he could complete this autobio- 
graphical sketch Mrs. Marsh started up 
in a fury, and brought her whip down on 
the table with a smartish cut. 

“You little heartless villain!’’ she 
screamed. “Is this the way you play 
upon people: bringing me from my home 


TEMPTATION. 129 
to console a maniac, and, instead of that, 
you are only what you always were, a 
spendthrift and a scamp? Finely they 
will laugh at me.”’ 

She clutched the whip in her white but 
powerful hand till it quivered in the air, 
impatient for a victim. 

‘*Oh!’’ she cried, panting, and strug- 
gling with her passion, ‘if I wasn’t a 
child of God, ?d—’’ 

‘«You’d give me a devilish good hid- 
ing,’’ said Vandeleur, demurely. 

“That I would,’’ said she, very ear- 
nestly. 

“You forget that I never told you I 
was mad. How could I imagine you 
would hear it? How could I dream you 
would come, even if you did ? ”’ 

‘“T should be no Christian if I didn’t 
come.; 3 

‘But I mean we parted bad friends, 
you know.” 

“Yes, Van; but when I asked you for 
the gray horse you sent mea new side- 
saddle. “A woman does not forget those 
little things. You were a gentleman, 
though a child of Belial.’ 

Vandeleur bowed most deferentially, as 
much as to say, ‘‘ In both those matters 
you are the highest authority earth con- 
tains.”’ 

‘“So come,’’ said she, “here is plenty 
of writing-paper. Now tell me all your 
debts, and I will put them down.”’ 

«What is the use? Ata shilling in 
the pound, six hundred will pay them all.”’ 

‘“ Are you sure? ”’ 

‘* As sure as that I am not going to rob 
you of the money.”’ 

‘¢Oh, I only mean to lend it you.’’ 

‘‘ That alters the case.”’ 

‘* Prodigiously.’’? And she smiled satir- 
ically. ‘‘ Now your friend’s address, that 
is treating with your creditors.”’ 

seMuste lL ee4 

““Unless you want to put me in a great 
passion.”’ 

‘‘ Anything sooner than that.”’ 
he wrote it for her. 

‘*And now,” said she, ‘‘ grant me a 
little favor for old acquaintance. Just 
kneel you down there, and let me wrestle 


with Heaven for you, that you may be a 
a ReEADE—VOL. VIII. 


? 


Then 


130 WORKS 
brand plucked from the fire, even as I 
am.”’ 

The Pink of Politeness submitted, with 
a sigh of resignation. 

Then she prayed for him so hard, so 
beseechingly, so eloquently, he was 
amazed and touched. 

She rose from her knees, and laid her 
head on her hand, exhausted a little by 
her own earnestness. 

He stood by her, and hung his head. 

“You are very good,”’ hesaid. ‘‘It is 
a Shame to let you waste it onme. Look 
here—I want to do a little bit of good to 
another man, after you praying so beau- 
tifully.”’ 

‘Ah! ITamso glad. Tell me.’’ 

‘Well, then, you mustn’t waste a 
thought on me, Rhoda. ’ma gambler 
and a fool: let me go to the dogs at once; 
it is only a question of time: but there’s 
a fellow here that is in trouble, and doesn’t 
deserve it, and he was a faithful friend to 
you, I believe. I never was. And he has 
gota wife: and by what I hear, you could 
get him out, I think, and [am sure you 
would be angry with me afterward if I 
didn’t tell you; you have such a good 
heart. It is Sir Charles Bassett.’’ 

‘«‘Sir Charles Bassett here! Oh, his 
poor wife! What drove him mad? Poor, 
poor Sir Charles !”’ 

‘‘Qh, he is all right. They have cured 
him entirely; but there is no getting him 
out, and he is beginning to lose heart, 
they say. There’s a literary swell here 
can tell you all about it; he has come 
down expressly: but they are in a fix, 
and I think you could help them out. I 
wish you would let me introduce you to 
him.’’ 

“To whom ?”’ 

«To Mr. Rolfe. 
novels.’ 

‘“‘T adore him. Introduce me at once. 
But Sir Charles must not see me, nor 
know I am here. Say Mrs. Marsh, a 
friend of Lady Bassett’s, begs to be in- 
troduced.”’ 

Sly Vandeleur delivered this to Rolfe ; 
but whispered out of his own head, ‘‘ A 
character for your next novel—a saint 
with the devil’s own temper.”’ 


You used to read his 


OF CHARLES 


RHADE. 


This insidious addition brought Mr. 
Rolfe to her directly. 

As might be expected from their go- 

ahead characters, these two knew each 
other intimately in about twelve minutes; 
and Rolfe told her all the facts I have 
related, and Marsh went into several 
passions, and corrected herself, and said 
she had been a great sinner, but was 
plucked from the burning, and therefore 
thankful to anybody who would give her 
a little bit of good to do. 
_ Rolfe took prompt advantage of this 
foible, and urged her to see the Commis- 
Sioners in Lunacy, and use all her elo- 
quence to get one of them down. ‘“ They 
don’t act upon my letters,’’ said he; 
‘*but it will be another thing if a beau- 
tiful, ardent woman puts it to them in 
person, with all that power of face and 
voice 1 see in you. You are all fire; and 
you can talk Saxon.”’ 

“Oh, T’ll talk, to them? seat aeeirs: 
Marsh, ‘‘and God will give me words; 
He always does when I am on His side. 
Poor Lady Bassett ! my heart bleeds for 
her. I will go to London to-morrow ; 
ay, to-night, if you like. To-night? Ill 
go this instant ! ”’ 

‘What!’ said Rolfe: ‘is there a 
lady in the world who will go a journey 
without packing seven trunks—and mere-: 
ly to do a good action ? ”’ 

“You forget. Penitent sinners must 
make up for lost time.’’ 

‘‘ At that rate impenitent ones like me 
had better lose none. So lll arm you at 
once with certain documents, and you 
must not leave the commissioners till 
they promise to send one of their number 
down without*delay to examine him, and 
discharge him if he is as we represent.”’ 

Mrs. Marsh consented warmly, and 
went with Rolfe to Dr. Suaby’s study. 

They armed her with letters and writ- 
ten facts, and she rode off at a fiery pace, 
but not before she and Rolfe had sworn 
eternal friendship. 

The commissioners received Mrs. Marsh 
coldly. She was chilled, but not daunted. 
She produced Suaby’s letter and Rolfe’s, 
and when they were read she played the 
orator. She argued, she remonstrated, 


A THRRIBLE 


she convinced, she persuaded, she thun- 
dered. Fire seemed to come out of the 
woman. 

Mr. Fawcett, on whom Mr. Rolfe had 
mainly relied, caught fire, and declared 
he would go down next day and look into 
the matter on the spot; and he kept his 
word. He came down; he saw Sir 
Charles and Suaby, aud penetrated the 
case. 

Mr. Fawcett was a man with a strong 
head and a good heart, but rather an 
arrogant manner. He was also slightly 
affected with official pomposity and reti- 
cence; so, unfortunately, he went away 
without declaring his good intentions, 
and discouraged them all with the fear 
of innumerable delays in the matter. 

Now if Justiceis slow, Injustice is swift. 
The very next day a thunder-clap fell on 
Sir Charles and his friends. 

Arrived at the door a fiy and pair, with 
three keepers from an asylum kept by 
Burdoch, a layman, the very opposite of 
the benevolent Suaby. His was a place 
where the old system of restraint pre- 
vailed, secretly but largely : strait-waist- 
coats, muffles, hand-locks, etc. Here fleas 
and bugs destroyed the patients’ rest ; 
and to counteract the insects morphia 
was administered freely. Given to the 
bugs and fleas, it would have been 
an effectual antidote; but they gave 
it to the patients, and so the insects 
won. 

These three keepers came with an order 
correctly drawn, and signed by Richard 
Bassett, to deliver Sir Charles to the 
agents showing the order. 

Suaby, who had a horror of Burdoch, 
turned pale at the sight of the order, and 
took it to Rolfe. 

** Resist !”’ said that worthy. 

“‘T have no right.”’ 

“On second thoughts, do nothing, but 
gain time, while I— Has Bassett paid 
you for Sir Charles’s board ? ”’ 

ce No;7” 

“Decline to give him up till that is 
done, and be some time making out the 
bill. Come what may, pray keep Sir 
Charles here till I send you a note that 
Tam ready.’’ 


TEMPTATION. 131 

He then hastened to Sir Charles and 
unfolded his plans to him. 

Sir Charles assented eagerly. He was 
quite willing to run risks with the hope 
of immediate liberation, which Rolfe held 
out. His own part was to delay and put 
off till he got a line from Rolfe. 

Rolfe then borrowed Vandeleur on 
parole and the doctor’s dog-cart, and 
dashed into the town, distant two 
miles. 

First he went to the little theater, and 
found them just concluding a rehearsal. 
Being a playwright, he was known to 
nearly all the people, more or less, and 
got five supers and one carpenter to join 
him—for a consideration. 

He then made other arrangements in 
the town, the nature of which will appear 
in due course. 

Meantime Suaby had presented his bill. 
One of the keepers got into the fly and 
took it back to the town. There, as Rolfe 
had anticipated, lurked Richard Bassett. 
He cursed the delay, gave the man the 
money, and urged expedition. The 
money was brought and paid, and Suaby 
informed Sir Charles. 

But Sir Charles was not obliged to 
hurry. He took a long time to pack; 
and he was not ready till Vandeleur 
brought a note to him from Rolfe. 

Then Sir Charles came down. 

Suaby made Burdoch’s keeper sign a 
paper to the effect that he had the 
baronet in charge, and relieved Suaby 
of all further responsibility. 

Then Sir Charles took an affectionate 
leave of Dr. Suaby, and made him 
promise to visit him at Huntercombe 
Hall. 

Then he got into the fly, and sat be- 
tween two keepers, and the fly drove off. 

Sir Charles at that moment needed all 
his fortitude. The least mistake or mis- 
calculation on the part of his friends, and 
what might not be the result to him ? 

As the fly went slowly through the 
gate he saw on his right hand a light 
carriage and pair moving up; but was it 
coming after him, or only bringing visi- 
tors to the asylum ? 

The fly rolled on ; even his stout heart 


132 


began to quake. It rolled and rolled. 
Sir Charles could stand it no longer. He 
tried to look out of the window to see if 
the carriage was following. 

One of the keepers pulled him in 


roughly. ‘‘Come, none of that, sir? ”’ 
“You insolent scoundrel!’’ said Sir 
Charles. 


‘‘Ay, ay,’’ said the man; ‘‘we’ll see 
about that when we get you home.” 

Then Sir Charles saw he had offended 
a vindictive blackguard. 

He sank back in his seat, and a cold 
chill crept over him. 

Just then they passed a little clump of 
fir-trees. 

In a moment there rushed out of these 
trees a number of men in crape masks, 
stopped the horses, surrounded the car- 
riage, and opened it with brandishing of 
bludgeons and life-preservers, and point- 
ing of guns. 


CHAPTER XXX. 


A BIG man, who seemed the leader, 
fired a volley of ferocious oaths at the 
keepers, and threatened to send them to 
hell that moment if they did not instant- 
ly deliver up that gentleman. 

The keepers were thoroughly terrified, 
and roared for mercy. 

«Hand him out here, you scoundrels ! ’’ 

“Yes! yes! Man alive, we are not re- 
sisting: what is the use ?”’ 

«Hand down his luggage.”’ 

It was done all in a flutter. 

“Now get in again; turn your horses’ 
heads the other way, and don’t come 
back for an hour. You with your guns 
take stations in those trees, and shoot 
them dead if they are back before their 
time.”’ 

These threats were interlarded with 
horrible oaths, and Burdoch’s party were 
glad to get off, and they drove away 
quickly in the direction indicated. 


WORKS OF CHARLES 


READE. 


However, as soon as they got over 
their first surprise they began to smell a 
hoax; and, instead of an hour, it was 
scarcely twenty minutes when they came 
back. 

But meantime the supers were paid 
liberally among the fir-trees by Van- 
deleur, pocketed their crape, flung their 
dummy guns into a cornfield, dispersed 
in different directions, and left no trace. 

But Sir Charles was not detained for 
that: the moment he was recaptured he 
and his luggage were whisked off in the 
other carriage, and, with Rolfe and his 
secretary, dashed round the town, avoid- 
ing the main street, to a railway eight 
miles off, at a pace almost defying pur- 
suit. Not that they dreaded it: they 
had numbers, arms, and a firm deter- 
mination to fight if necessary, and also 
three tongues to tell the truth, instead 
of one. 

At one in the morning they were in 
London. They slept at Mr. Rolfe’s 
house; and before breakfast Mr. Rolfe’s 
secretary was sent to secure a couple of 
prize-fighters to attend upon Sir Charles 
till further notice. They were furnished 
with a written paper explaining the case 
briefly, and were instructed to hit first 
and talk afterward should a recapture be 
attempted. Should a crowd collect, they 
were to produce the letter. These meas- 
ures were to provide against his recap- 
ture under the statute, which allows an 
alleged lunatic to be retaken upon the 
old certificates for fourteen days after 
his escape from confinement, but for no 
longer. 

Money is a good friend in such contin- 
gencies as these. 

Sir Charles started directly after 
breakfast to find his wife and child. The 
faithful pugilists followed at his heels in. 
another cab. 

Neither Sir Charles nor Mr. Rolfe knew 
Lady Bassett’s address: it was the medi- 
cal man who had written: but that did 
not much matter; Sir Charles was sure 
to learn his wife’s address from Mr. Bod- 
dington. He call on that gentleman at 
17 Upper Gloucester Place. 

Mr. Boddington had just taken his wife 


A THRRIBLE 


down to Margate for her health; had 
only been gone half an hour. 

This was truly irritating and annoy- 
ing. Apparently Sir Charles must wait 
that gentleman’s return. He wrote a 
line, begging Mr. Boddington to send 
him Lady Bassett’s address in a cab im- 
mediately on his return. 

He told Mr. Rolfe this; and then for 
the first time let out that his wife’s not 
writing to him at the asylum had sur- 
prised and alarmed him; he was on 
thorns. 

Mr. Boddington returned in the mid- 
dle of the night, and at breakfast time 
Sir Charles had a note to say Lady 
Bassett was at 119 Gloucester Place, 
Portman Square. 

Sir Charles bolted a mouthful or two of 
breakfast, and then dashed off in a han- 
som to 119 Gloucester Place. 

There was a bill in the window, “ To 
be let, furnished. Apply to Parker & 
Ellis.’’ 

He knocked at the door. Nobody 
came. Knocked again. <A lugubrious 
female opened the door. 

‘Lady Bassett ?”’ 

‘* Don’t live here, sir. 
leba¢ 

Sir Charles went to Mr. Boddington 
and told him. 

Mr. Boddington said he thought he 
could not be mistaken; but he would 
look at his address-book. He did, and 
said it was certainly 119 Gloucester 
Place. ‘‘ Perhaps she has left,’’ said he. 
“She was very healthy—an excellent 


House to be 


patient. But I should not have ad- 
vised her to move for a day or two 
more.”’ 


Sir Charles was sore puzzled. He 
dashed off to the agents, Parker & 
Ellis. 

They said, Yes; the house was Lady 
Bassett’s for a few months. They were 
instructed to let it. 

‘“When did she leave? Iam her hus- 
band, and we have missed each other 
somehow.”’ 

The clerk interfered,-and said Lady 
Bassett had brought the keys in her car- 
riage yesterday. 


TEMPTATION. 133 

Sir Charles groaned with vexation and 
annoyance. 

‘* Did she give you no address ? ”’ 

‘Yes, sir. Huntercombe Hall.’’ 

‘‘] mean no address in London ? ”’ 

‘“No, sir; none.’’ 

Sir Charles was now truly perplexed 
and distressed, and all manner of strange 
ideas came into his head. He did not 
know what to do, but he could not bear 
to do nothing, so he drove to the Times 
office and advertised, requesting Lady 
Bassett to send her present address to 
Mr. Rolfe. 

At night he talked this strange busi- 
ness over with Mr. Rolfe. 

That gentleman thought she must have 
gone to Huntercombe; but by the last 
post a letter came from Suaby, inclosing 
one from Lady Bassett to her husband. 


**119 Gloucester Place. 


‘* DARLING—The air here is not good 
for baby, and I cannot sleep for the noise. 
We think of creeping toward home to- 
morrow, in an easy carriage. Pray God 
you may soon meet us at dear Hunter- 
combe. Our first journey will be to that 
dear old comfortable inn at Winterfield, 
where vou and I were so happy, but not 
happier, dearest darling, than we shall 
soon be again, I hope. 

‘¢ Your devoted wife. 
‘‘ BELLA BASSETT. 


‘*My heartfelt thanks to Mr. Rolfe for 
all he is doing.’’ 


Sir Charles wanted to start that night 
for Winterfield, but Rolfe persuaded him 
not. ‘‘And mind,’’ said he, “‘ the faith- 
ful pugilists must go with you.”’ 

The morning’s post rendered that need- 
less. It brought another letter from 
Suaby, informing Mr. Rolfe that the 
Commissioners had positively discharged 
Sir Charles, and notified the discharge to 
Richard Bassett. 

Sir Charles took leave of Mr. Rolfe as 
of a man who was to be his bosom friend 
for life, and proceeded to hunt his wife. 

She had left Winterfield ; but he fol- 
lowed her like a stanch hound, and when 
he stopped at a certain inn, some twen- 


134 


ty miles from Huntercombe, a window 
opened, there was a strange loving 
scream ; he looked up, and saw his wife’s 
radiant face, and her figure ready to fly 
down to him. He rushed upstairs, into 
the right room by some mighty instinct, 
and held her, panting and crying for joy, 
in his arms. 

That moment almost compensated what 
each had suffered. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


So full was the joy of this loving pair 
that, for a long time, they sat rocking in 
each other’s arms, and thought of nothing 
but their sorrows past, and the sea of bliss 
they were floating on. 

But presently Sir Charles glanced round 
for a moment. Swift to interpret his 
every look, Lady Bassett rose, took two 
steps, came back and printed a kiss on 
his forehead, and then went to a door 
and opened it. 

‘Mrs. Millar! ’’ said she, with one of 
those tones by which these ladies impreg- 
nate with meaning a word that has none 
at all; and then she came back to her 
husband. 

Soona buxom woman of forty appeared, 
carrying a biggish bank of linen and lace, 
with a little face in the middle. The good 
woman held it up to Sir Charles, and he 
felt something novel stir inside him. He 
looked at the little thing with a vast 
yearning of love, with pride, and a good 
deal of curiosity ; and then turned smil- 
ing to his wife. She had watched him 
furtively but keenly, and her eyes were 
brimming over. He kissed the little 
thing, and blessed it, and then took his 
wife’s hands, and kissed her wet eyes, 
and made her stand and look at baby 
with him, handin hand. It was a pretty 
picture. 

The buxom woman swelled her feathers, 
as simple women do when they exhibit 


WORKS OF CHARLES 


READE. 


a treasure of this sort; she lifted the little 
mite slowly up and down, and said, ‘‘Oh, 
you Beauty!’? and then went off into 
various inarticulate sounds, which I rec- 
ommend to the particular study of the 
new philosophers: they cannot have been 
invented after speech ; that would be ret- 
rogression; they must be the vocal re- 
mains of that hairy, sharp-eared gquad- 
ruped, our Progenitor, who by accident 
discovered language, and so turned Biped, 
and went ahead of all the other hairy 
quadrupeds, whose ears were too long or 

not sharp enough to stumble upon lan-— 
guage. 

Under cover of these primeval sounds 
Lady Bassett drew her husband a little 
apart, and looking in his face with piteous 
wistfulness, said, ‘‘ You won’t mind Rich- 
ard Bassett and his baby now ? ”’ 

cra OL ake 

** You will never have another fit while 
you live ?’’ 

«‘] promise.”’ 

‘You will always be happy ? ”’ 

“TY must be an ungrateful scoundrel 
else, my dear.”’ 

“Then baby zs our best friend. Oh, 

you little angel!’’ And she pounced on 
the mite, and kissed it far harder than 
Sir Charles had. Heaven knows why 
these gentle creatures are so rough 
with their mouths to children, but so 
it is. 
eAnd now how can a mere male relate 
all the pretty childish things that were 
done and said to baby, and of baby, be- 
fore the inevitable squalling began, and 
baby was taken away to be consoled by 
another of his subjects. 

Sir Charles and Lady Bassett had a 
thousand things to tell each other, to 
murmur in each other’s ears, sitting lov- 
ingly close to each other. 

But when all was quiet, and everybody 
else was in bed, Lady Bassett plucked 
up courage and said, ‘“‘Charles, I am not 
quite happy. There is one thing want- 


ing.’? And then she hid her face in her 
hands and blushed. ‘I cannot nurse 
him.”’ 


«¢ Never mind,’’ said Sir Charles kindly. 
‘¢ You forgive me ?’’ 


A TERRIBLE 


‘“‘Worgive you, my poor girl! Why, 
is that a crime? ”’ 
“It leads to so many things. You 


don’t know what a plague a nurse is, and 
makes one jealous.”’ 

«Well, but it is only fora time. Come, 
Bella, this is a little peevish. Don’t let 
us be ungrateful to Heaven. As for me, 
while you and our child live, I am proof 
against much greater misfortunes than 
that.’’ 

Then Lady Bassett cleared up, and the 
subject dropped. 

But it was renewed next morning in a 
more definite form. 

Sir Charles rose early ; and in the pride 
and joy of his heart, and not quite with- 
out an eye to triumphing over his mor- 
tal enemy and his cold friends, sent a 
mounted messenger with orders to his 
servants to prepare for his immediate 
reception, and to send out his landau and 
four horses to the ‘‘ Rose,’’ at Staveleigh, 
half-way between Huntercombe and the 
place where he now was. Lady Bassett 
had announced herself able for the jour- 
ney. 

After breakfast he asked her rather 
suddenly whether Mrs. Millar was not 
rather an elderly woman to select for a 
nurse. ‘‘l thought people got a young 
woman for that office.’’ 

“‘Oh,”’ said Lady Bassett, “‘ why, Mrs. 
Millar is not the nurse. Of course nurse 
is young and healthy, and from the 
country, and the best I could have in 
every way for baby. But yet—oh, 
Charles, I hope you will not be angry— 
who do you think nurse is? It is Mary 
Gosport—Mary Wells that was.”’ 

Sir Charles was a little staggered. He 
put this and that together, and said, 
“Why, she must have been playing the 
fool, then ?’”’ | 

‘‘Hush! not so loud, dear. She is a 
married woman now, and her husband 
gone to sea, and her child dead. Most 
wet-nurses have a child of their own; 
and don’t you think they must hate the 
stranger’s child that parts them from 
their own? Now baby is a comfort to 
Mary. And the wet-nurse is always a 
tyrant; and | thought, as this one has 


TEMPTATION. 135 
got into a habit of obeying me, she might 
be more manageable; and then as to her 
having been imprudent, 1 know many 
ladies who have been obliged to shut 
their eyes a little. Why, consider, 
Charles, would good wives and good 
mothers leave their own children to 
nurse a stranger’s? Would their hus- 
bands let them? And I thought,” said 
she, piteously, ‘‘we were so fortunate 
to get a young, healthy girl, imprudent 
but not vicious, whose fault had been 
covered by marriage, and then so at- 


tached to us both as she is, poor 
thing ! ”’ 

Sir Charles was in no humor to make 
mountains of mole-hills. ‘Why, my 


dear Bella,’’ said he, ‘‘after all, this is 
your department, not mine.”’ 

‘Yes, but unless I please you in every 
department there is no happiness for 
me.’’ 

“But you know you please me in 
everything; and the more I look into 
anything, the wiser 1 always think you. 
You have chosen the best wet-nurse 
possible. Send her to me.’’ 

Lady Bassett hesitated. <‘‘ You will 
be kind to her. You know the conse- 
quence if anything happens to make her 
fret. Baby will suffer for it.’’ 

“Oh, I know. Catch me offending 
this she potentate till he is weaned. 
Dress for the journey, my dear, and send 
nurse to me,’’ 

Lady Bassett went into the next room, 
and after along time Mary came to Sir 
Charles with baby in her arms. 

Mary had lost for a time some of her 
ruddy color, but her skin was clearer, 
and somehow her face was softened. She 
looked really a beautiful and attractive 
young woman. 

She courtesied to Sir Charles, and then 
took a good look at him. 

‘Well, nurse,’’? said he, cheerfully, 
‘here we are back again, both of us.”’ 

“‘That we be, sir.’?’ And she showed 
her white teeth ina broad smile. ‘‘ La, 
sir, you be a sight for sore eyes. How 
well you do look, to be sure! ”’ 

‘‘Thank you, Mary. I never was better 
in my life. You look pretty well too; 


136 WORKS 
only a little pale; paler than Lady 
Bassett does.” 

‘IT give my color to the child, 
Mary, simply. 

She did not know she had said any- 
thing poetic; but Sir Charles was so 
touched and pleased with her answer 
that he gave her a five-pound note on 
the spot; and he said, ‘‘ We'll bring 
your color back if beef and beer and 
kindness can do it.”’ 

“Train > ateard o that, sir; and 17ll 
arn it. ’Tis a lovely boy, sir, and your 
very image.”’ 

Inspection followed ; and something or 
other offended young master; he began 
to cackle. 
him away, as Mrs. Millar had. She just 
sat down with him and nursed him 
openly, with rustic composure and sim- 
plicity. 

Sir Charles leaned his arm on the man- 
tel-piece, and eyed the pair; for all this 
was a new world of feeling to him. His 
paid servant seemed to him to be play- 
ing the mother to his child. Somehow it 
gave him a strange twinge, a sort of vi- 
carious jealousy: he felt for his Bella. 
But I think his own paternal pride, in all 
its freshness, was hurt a little too. 

At last he shrugged his shoulders, and 
was going out of the room, with a hint 
to Mary that she must wrap herself up, 
for it would be an open carriage— 

‘Your own carriage, sir, and horses ? ”’ 

‘* Certainly.”’ 

‘* And do all the folk know as we are 
coming ? ” 

Sir Charles laughed. ‘‘ Most likely. 
Gossip is not dead at Huntercombe, I 
dare say.”’ 

Nurse’s black eyes flashed. ‘‘ All the 
village will be out. I hope he will see us 
ride in, the black-hearted villain !°’’ 

Sir Charles was too proud to let her 
draw him into that topic; he went about 
his business. 


99 


said 


Lady Bassett’s carriage, duly packed, 
came round, and Lady Bassett was ready 
soon afterward ; so was Mrs. Millar; so 
was baby, imbedded now in a nest of 
lawn and lace and white fur. They had 


But this nurse did not take. 


OF CHARLES READE. 


to wait for nurse. Lady Bassett ex- 
plained sotto voce to her husband, ‘ Just 
at the last moment she was seized with a 
desire to wear a silk gown I gave her. I 
argued with her, but she only pouted. I 
was afraid for baby. It is very hard 
upon you, dear.”’ 

Her face and voice were so piteous that 
Sir Charles burst out laughing. 

“We must take the bitter along with 
the sweet. Don’t you think the sweet 
rather predominates at. present ? ”’ 

Lady Bassett explored his face with all 
her eyes. ‘‘ My darling is happy now; 
trifles cannot put him out.”’ 

‘‘T doubt if anything could shake me 
while [have you and our child. As for 
that jade keeping us all waiting while 
she dons silk attire, it is simply delicious. 
I wish Rolfe was here, that isall. Ha! 
ha! ha!’’ 

Mrs. Gosport appeared at last in a 
purple silk gown, and marched to the 
carriage without the shghtest sign of the 
discomfort she really felt; but that was 
no wonder, belonging, as she did, to a 
sex which can walk not only smiling but 
jauntily, though dead lame on stilts, as 
you may see any day in Regent Street. 

Sir Charles, with mock gravity, ush- 
ered King Baby and his attendants in 
first, then Lady Bassett, and got in last 
himself. 

Before they had gone a mile Nurse No. 
1 handed the child over to Nurse No. 2 
with a lofty condescension, as who should 
say, ‘‘ You suffice for porterage; I, the 
superior artist, reserve myself for emer- 
gencies.’’ No. 2 received the invaluable 
bundle with meek complacency. 

By-and-by Nurse 1 got fidgety, and 
kept changing her position. 

‘‘¢What is the matter, Mary?” said 
Lady Bassett, kindly. ‘Is the dress too 
tight ?”’ 

‘*No, no, my lady,’’ said Mary, sharply ; 
‘the gownd’s all right.’’ And then she 
was quiet a little. 

But she began again; and then Lady 
Bassett whispered Sir Charles, ‘‘I think 
she wants to sit forward: may 1?” 

‘Certainly not. Ill change with her. 
Here, Mary, try this side. We shall 


A TERRIBLE 
have more room in the landau; it is 
double, with wide seats.”’ 

Mary was gratified, and amused her- 
self looking out of the window. Indeed, 
she was quiet for nearly half an hour. 
At the expiration of that period the fit 
took her again. She beckoned haughtily 
for baby, “which did come at her com- 
mand,’’ as the song says. She got tired 
of baby, or something, and handed him 
back again. 

Presently she was discovered to be 
crying. 

General consternation! Universal but 
vague consolation ! 

Lady Bassett looked an inquiry at Mrs. 
Millar. Mrs. Millar looked back assent. 
Lady Bassett assumed the command, 
and took off Mary’s shawl. 

“‘Ves,’’ said she to Mrs. Millar. 
Mary, be good; it zs too tight.”’ 

Thus urged, the idiot contracted herself 
by a mighty effort, while Lady Bassett 
attacked the fastenings, and, with infi- 
nite difficulty, they unhooked three bot- 
tom hooks. The fierce burst open that 
followed, and the awful chasm, showed 
what gigantic strength vanity can com- 
mand, and how savagely abuse it to mal- 
treat nature. 

Lady Bassett loosened the stays too, 
and a deep sigh of relief told the truth, 
which the lying tongue had denied, as it 
always does whenever the same question 
is put. 

The shawl was replaced, and comfort 
gained till they entered the town of Stave- 
leigh. 

Nurse instantly exchanged places with 
Sir Charles, and took the «child again. 
He was her banner in all public places. 

When they came up to the inn they 
were greeted with loud hurrahs. It was 
market-day. The town was full of Sir 
Charles’s tenants and other farmers. His 
return had got wind, and every farmer 
under fifty had resolved to ride with him 
into Huntercombe. 

When five or six, all shouting together, 
intimated this to Sir Charles, he sent one 
of his people to order the butchers out to 
Huntercombe with joints a score, and 
then to gallop on with a note to his 


‘Now, 


THMPTATION. 137 
housekeeper and butler. ‘‘ For those 
that ride so far with me must sup with 
me,’’ said he; asentiment that was much 
approved. 

He took Lady Bassett and the women 
upstairs and rested them about an hour ; 
and then they started for Huntercombe, 
followed by some thirty farmers and a 
dozen towns-people, who had a mind for 
a lark and to sup at Huntercombe Hall 
for once. 

The ride was delightful; the carriage 
bowled swiftly along over a smooth road, 
with often turf at the side; and that 
enabled the young farmers to canter 
alongside without dusting the carriage 
party. Every man on horseback they 
overtook joined them; some they met 
turned back with them, and these were 
rewarded with loud cheers. Every eye 
in the carriage glittered, and every cheek 
was more or less flushed by this uproar- 
ious sympathy so gallantly shown, and 
the very thunder of so many horses’ feet, 
each carrying a friend, was very exciting 
and glorious. Why, before they got to 
the village they had fourscore horsemen 
at their backs. 

As they got close to the village Mary 
Gosport held out her arms for young 
master: this was not the time to forego 
her importance. 

The church-bells rang out a clashing 
peal, the cavalcade clattered into the vil- 
lage. Everybody was out to cheer, and 
at sight of baby the women’s voices were 
as loud as the men’s. Old pensioners of 
the house were out bareheaded ; one, 
with hair white as snow, was down on 
his knees praying a blessing on them. 

Lady Bassett began to cry softly ; Sir 
Charles, a little pale, but firm as a rock; 
both bowing right and left, lke royal 
personages ; and well they might; every 
house in the village belonged to them 
but one. 

On approaching that one Mary Gos- 
port turned her head round, and shot a 
glance round out of the tail of her eye. 
Ay, there was Richard Bassett, pale and 
gloomy, half-hid behind a tree at his gate: 
but Hate’s quick eve discerned him: at 
the moment of passing she suddenly lifted 


138 


the child high, and showed it ‘him, pre- 
tending to show it to the crowd: but her 
eye told the tale; for, with that act of 
fierce hatred and cunning triumph, those 
black orbs shot a colored gleam like a 
furious leopardess’s. 

A roar of cheers burst from the crowd 
at that inspired gesture of a woman, 
whose face and eyes seemed on fire: 
Lady Bassett turned pale. 

The next moment they passed their 
own gate, and dashed up to the hall 
steps of Huntercombe. 

Sir Charles sent Lady Bassett to her 
room for the night. She walked through 
a row of ducking servants, bowing and 
smiling like a gentle goddess. 

Mary Gosport, afraid to march in a 
long dress with the child, for fear of ac- 
cidents, handed him superbly to Millar 
and strutted haughtily after her mis- 
tress, nodding patronage. Her follower, 
the meek Millar, stopped often to show 
the heir right and left, with simple geni- 
ality and kindness. 

Sir Charles stood on the hall steps, 
and invited all to come in and take pot- 
luck. 

Already spits were turning before 
great fires; a rump of beef, legs of 
pork, and pease-puddings boiling in one 
copper; turkeys and fowls in another ; 
joints and pies baking in the great brick 
ovens; barrels of beer on tap, and mag- 
nums of champagne and port marching 
steadily up from the cellars, and forming 
in line and square upon sideboards and 
tables. , 

Supper was laid in the hall, the dining- 
room, the drawing-room, and the great 
kitchen. 

Poor villagers trickled in: no man or 
woman was denied; if was open house 
that night, as it had been four hundred 
years ago. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


WHEN Sharpe’s clerk retired, after 
serving that writ on Bassett, Bassett 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


went to Wheeler and treated it as a jest. 
But Wheeler looked puzzled, and Bas- 
sett himself, on second thoughts, said he 
should like advice of counsel. According- 
ly they both went up to London to a 
solicitor, and obtained an interview with 
a counsel learned in the law. He heard 
their story, and said, ‘‘ The question is, 
can you convince a jury he was insane at 
the time? ”’ 

‘But he can’t get into court,’’ said 
Bassett. ‘‘I won’t let him.’ 

‘Oh, the court, will make you produce 
him.’’ 

‘*But I thought an insane person was 
civiliter mortuus, and couldn’t sue.”’ 

‘So he is; but this man is not insane 
inlaw. Shutting up a man on certificates 
is merely a preliminary step to a fair 
trial by his peers whether he is insane 
or not. Take the parallel case of a 
felon. A magistrate -commits him for 
trial, and generally on better evidence 
than medical certificates; but that does 
not make the man a felon, or disentitle 
him to a trial by his peers; on the con- 
trary, it entitles him to a trial, and he 
could get Parliament to interfere if he 
was not brought to trial. This plaintiff 
simply does what, he will say, you ought 
to have doue ; he tries himself; if he tries 
you at the same time, that is your fault. 
If he is insane now, fight. If he is not, I 
advise you to discharge him on the in- 
stant, and then compound.”’ 

Wheeler said he was afraid the 
plaintiff was too vindictive to come to 
terms. 

“Well, then, you can show you dis- 
charged him the moment you had reason 
to think he was cured, and you must 
prove he was insane when you incarcer- 
ated him; but I warn you it will be up- 
hill work if he is sane now; the jury will 
be apt to go by what they see.”’ 

Bassett and Wheeler retired ; the lat- 
ter did not presume to differ; but Bassett 
was dissatisfied and irritated. 

‘That fellow would only see the plain- 
tiff’s side,’’ said he. ‘‘ The fool forgets 
there is an Act of Parliament, and that 
we have complied with its provisions to 
By 4 


oe 


A TERRIBLE 


‘*Then why did you not ask his con- 
struction of the Act?’ suggested 
Wheeler. 

“Because I don’t want his construc- 
tion. I’ve read it, and it is plain enough 
to anybody but a fool. Well, I have con- 
sulted counsel, to please you; and now 
I’ll go my own way, to please myself.’’ 

He went to Burdoch, and struck a bar- 
gain, and Sir Charles was to be shifted to 
Burdoch’s asylum, and nobody allowed 
to see him there, etc., etc.; the old sys- 
tem, in short, than which no better has 
as yet been devised for perpetuating, or 
even causing, mental aberration. 

Rolfe baffled this, as described, and 
Bassett was literally stunned. He now 
saw that Sir Charles had an ally full of 
resources and resolution. Who could it 
be? He began to tremble. He com- 
plained to the police, and set them to dis- 
cover who had thus openly and auda- 
ciously violated the Act of Parliament, 
and then he went and threatened Dr. 
Suaby. 

But Rolfe and Sir Charles, who loved 
Suaby as he deserved, had provided 
against that; they had not let the 
doctor into their secret. He therefore 
sald, with perfect truth, that he had no 
hand in the matter, and that Sir Charles, 
being bound upon his honof not to escape 
from Bellevue, would be in the asylum 
still if Mr. Bassett had not taken him 
out, and invoked brute force, in the shape 
of Burdoch: -*‘ Well,‘ :sir,’’ said: he,. ‘it 
seems they have shown you two can play 
at that game.’ And so bade him good 
afternoon very civilly. 

Bassett went home sickened. He re- 
mained sullen and torpid for a day or 
two; then he wrote to Burdoch to send 
to London and try and recapture Sir 
Charles. 

But next day he revoked his instruc- 
tions, for he got a letter from the Com- 
missioners of Lunacy, announcing the 
authoritative discharge of Sir Charles, 
on the strong representation of Dr. Suaby 
and other competent persons. 

That settled the matter, and the poor 
cousin had kept the rich cousin three 
months at his own expense, with no 


SS eS SS Ee 


THEMPTATION, 139 
solid advantage, but the prospect of a 
lawsuit. 

Sharpe, spurred by Rolfe, gave him no 
breathing time. With the utmost expedi- 
tion the Declaration in Bassett v. Bassett 
followed the writ. 

It was short, simple, and in three 
counts. 

‘“‘For violently seizing and confining 
the plaintiff in a certain place, on a false 
pretense that he was insane. 

‘‘ For detaining him in spite of evidence 
that he was not insane. 

‘* Hor endeavoring to remove him to an- 
other place, with a certain sinister motive 
there specified. 

‘‘By which several acts the plaintiff 
had suffered in his health and his worldly 
affairs, and had endured great agony of 
mind.”’ 

And the plaintiff claimed damages, ten 
thousand pounds. 

Bassett sent over for his friend 
Wheeler, and showed him the new 
document with no little consternation. 

But their discussion of it was speedily 
interrupted by the clashing of triumphant 
bells and distant shouting. 

They ran out to see what it was. Bas- 
sett, half suspecting, hung back; but 
Mary Gosport’s keen eye detected him, 
and she held up the heir to him, with 
hate and triumph blazing in her face, 

He crept into his own house and sank 
into a chair foudroye. 

Wheeler, however, roused him to a 
necessary effort, and next day they took 
the Declaration to counsel, to settle 
their defense in due form. 

“What is this?’’ said the learned 
gentleman. ‘“ Three counts! Why, Il 
advised you to discharge him at once.’’ 

“ Yes,’’ said Wheeler, ‘‘and excellent 
advice it was. But my client—’’ 

‘Preferred to go his own road. And 
now I am to cure the error I did what I 
could to prevent.”’ 

‘‘T dare say, sir, it is not the first time 
in your experience.”’ 

‘“Not by a great many. Clients, in 
general, have a great contempt for the 
notion that prevention is better than 
eure.“ 


140 WORKS 


“He can’t hurt me,”’ said Bassett, 
impatiently. ‘‘He was separately ex- 
amined by two doctors, and all the pro- 
visions of the statute exactly compled 
with.’’ 

‘* But that is no defense to this plaint. 
The statute forbids you to imprison an 
insane person without certain precau- 
tions ; but it does not give youa right, 
under any circumstances, to imprison a 
saneman. That was decided in Butcher 
v. Butcher. The defense you rely on was 
pleaded as a second plea, and the plain- 
tiff demurred to it directly. The question 
was argued before the full court, and 
the judges, led by the first lawyer of the 
age, decided unanimously that the pro- 
visions of the statute did not affect sane 
Englishmen and their rights under the 
common law. ‘They ordered the plea to 
be struck off the record, and the case was 
reduced to a simple issue of sane or in- 
sane. Butcher v. Butcher governs all 
these cases. Can you prove him insane ? 
If not, you had better compound on any 
terms. In Butcher’s case the jury gave 
£3,000, and the plaintiff was a man of 
very inferior position to Sir Charles Bas- 
sett. Besides, the defendant, Butcher, 
had not persisted against evidence, as 
you have. They will award £5,000 at 
least in this case.’’ 

He took down a volume of reports, and 
showed them the case he had cited; and, 
on reading the unanimous decision of the 
judges, and the learning by which they 
were supported, Wheeler said at once: 
‘““Mr. Bassett, we might as well try to 
knock down St. Paul’s with our heads as 
to go against this decision.’’ 

They then settled to put in a single 
plea, that Sir Charles was insane at the 
time of his capture. 

This done, to gain time, Wheeler called 
on Sharpe, and, after several conferences, 
got the case compounded by an apology, 
a solemn retractation in writing, and the 
payment of four thousand pounds; his 
counsel assured him his client was very 
lucky to get off so cheap. 

Bassett paid the money, with the 
assistance of his wife’s father: but it 
was a sickener; it broke his _ spirit, 


SS rs ee SSS Ss SS sss rss SS PS = 


OF CHARLES READE. 


and even injured his health for some 
time. 

Sir Charles improved the village with 
the money, and gave a copy-hold tene- 
ment to each of the men Bassett had 
got imprisoned. So they and their sons 
and their grandsons lived rent free—no, 
now I think of it, they had to pay four 
pence a year to the Lord of the Manor. 


Defeated at every point, and at last 
punished severely, Richard Bassett fell 
into a deep dejection and solitary brood- 
ing of a sort very dangerous to the rea- 
son. He would not go out-of-doors to 
give his enemies a triumph. He used to 
sit by the fire and mutter, ‘‘ Blow upon 
blow, blow upon blow. My poor boy will 
never be lord of Huntercombe now !’’ 
and so on. 

Wheeler pitied him, but could not rouse 
him. At last a person for whose narrow 
attainments and simplicity he had a pro- 
found, though, to do him justice, a civil 
contempt, ventured to his rescue. Mrs. 
Bassett went crying to her father, and 
told him she feared the worst if Richard’s 
mind could not be diverted from the Hun- 
tercombe estate and his hatred of Sir 
Charles and Lady Bassett, which had 
been the great misfortune of her life and 
of his own, but nothing would ever eradi- 
cate it. Richard had great abilities ; was 
a linguist, a wonderful accountant; could 
her dear father find him some profitable 
employment to divert his thoughts ? 

‘“What! all in a moment?” said the 
old man. ‘‘ Then [shall have to buy it; 
and if I goon like this I shall not have 
much to leave you.”’ 

Having delivered this objection, he 
went up to London, and, having many 
friends in the City, and laying himself 
open to proposals, he got scent at last of 
a new insurance company that proposed 
also to deal in reversions, especially to 
entailed estates. By prompt purchase of 
shares in Bassett’s name, and introducing 
Bassett himself, who, by special study, 
had a vast acquaintance with entailed es- 
tates, and a genius for arithmetical cal- 
culation, he managed somehow to get him 
into the direction, with a stipend, and a 


A TERRIBLE 


commission on all business he might in- 
troduce to the office. 

Bassett yielded sullenly, and now di- 
vided his time between London and the 
country. 

Wheeler worked with him ona share of 
commission, and they made some money 
between them. 

After the bitter lesson he had received 
Bassett vowed to himself he never would 
attack Sir Charles again unless he was 
sure of victory. For all this he hated him 
and Lady Bassett worse than ever, hated 
them to the death. 

He never moved a finger down at Hun- 
tercombe, nor said a word; but in London 
he employed a private inquirer to find out 
where Lady Bassett had lived at the time 
of her confinement, and whether any 
clergyman had visited her. 

The private inquirer could find out noth- 
ing, and Bassett, comparing his adver- 
tisements with his performance, dismissed 
him for a humbug. 

But the office brought him into contact 
with a great many medical men, one after 
another. He used to say to each stranger, 
with an insidious smile, ‘‘ 1 think you once 
attended my cousin—Lady Bassett.’ 


CHAPTER XXXITI. 


Sir CHARLES and Lady Bassett, re- 
lieved of their cousin’s active enmity, led 
a quiet life, and one that no longer fur- 
nished striking incidents. 

But dramatic incident is not every- 
thing: character and feeling show them- 
selves in things that will not make pict- 
ures. Now it was precisely during this 
reposeful period that three personages of 
this story exhibited fresh traits of feeling, 
and also of character. 

To begin with Sir Charles Bassett. 
He came back from the asylum much 
altered in body and mind. Stopping his 
cigars had improved his stomach ; work- 


TEMPTATION. 141 
ing in the garden had increased his mus- 
cular power, and his cheeks were healthy, 
and a little sunburned, instead of sallow. 
His mind was also improved: contempla- 
tion of insane persons had set him by a 


natural recoil to study self-control. He 
had returned a philosopher. No small 
thing could irritate him now. So far his 


character was elevated. 

Lady Bassett was much the same as 
before, except a certain restlessness. She 
wanted to be told every day, or twice a 
day, that her husband was happy; and, 
although he was visibly so, yet, as he was 
quiet over it, she used to be always asking 
him if he was happy. This the reader 
must interpret as he pleases. 

Mary Gosport gave herself airs. Re- 
spectful to her master and mistress, but 
not so tolerant of chaff in the kitchen as 
she used to be. Made an example of one 
girl, who threw a doubt on her marriage. 
Complained to Lady Bassett, affected to 
fret, and the girl was disinissed. 

She turned singer. She had always 
sung psalms in church, but never a pro- 
fane note in the house. Now she took to 
singing over her nursling ; she had a voice 
of prodigious power and mellowness, and, 
provided she was not asked, would sing 
lullabies and nursery rhymes from another 
county that ravished the hearer. Horse- 
men have been known to stop in the road 
to hear her sing through an open window 
of Huntercombe, two hundred yards off. 

Old Mr. Meyrick, a farmer well-to-do, 
fascinated by Mary Gosport’s singing, 
asked her to be his housekeeper when 
she should have done nursing her charge. 

She laughed in his face. 

A fanatic who was staying with Sir 
Charles Bassett offered her three years’ 
education in Do, Ra, Mi, Fa, preparatory 
to singing at the opera. 

Declined without thanks. 

Mr. Drake, after hovering shyly, at 
jast found courage to reproach her for 
deserting him and marrying a sailor. 

“Teach you not to shilly-shally,”’ 


said she. ‘Beauty won’t go a-beg- 
ging. Mind you look sharper next 
time.’’ 


This dialogue, being held in the kitchen, 


142 WORKS 
gave the women some amusement at the 
young farmer’s expense. 

One day Mr. Richard Bassett, from 
motives of pure affection no doubt, not 
curiosity, desired mightily to inspect 
Mr. Bassett, aged eight months and two 
days. 

So, in his usual wily way, he wrote 
to Mrs. Gosport, asking her, for old 
acquaintance’ sake, to meet him in the 
meadow at the end of the lawn. This 
meadow belonged to Sir Charles, but 
Richard Bassett had a right of way 
through it, and could step into it by a 
postern, as Mary could by an iron gate. 

He: asked her to come at eleven o’clock, 
because at that hour he observed she 
walked on the lawn with her charge. 

Mary Gosport came to the tryst, but 
without Mr. Bassett. 

Richard was very polite; 
taciturn, observant. 

At last he said, ‘‘ But where’s the little 
heir ? ”’ 

She flew at him directly. “It is him 
you wanted, not me. Did you think I’d 
bring him here—for you to kill him?” 

“‘Come, I say.”’ 

“Ay, you'd kill him if you had a 
chance. But you never shall. Or if 
you didn’t kill him, you’d cast the evil- 
eye on him, for you are well known to 
have the evil-eye. No; he shall outlive 
thee and thine, and be lord of these here 
manors when thou is gone to hell, thou 
villain.’’ 

Mr. Richard Bassett turned pale, but 
did the wisest thing he could—put his 
hands in his pockets, and walked into 


she cold, 


his own premises, followed, however, by | 


Mary Gosport, who stormed at him till 
he shut his postern in her face. 


She stood there trembling for a little | 


while, then walked away, crying. 

But having a mind like running water, 
she was soon seated on a garden chair, 
singing over her nursling like a mavis: 
she had delivered him to Millar while she 
went to speak her mind to her old lover. 

As for Richard Bassett, he was theory- 
bitten, and so turned every thing one 
way. Io be sure, as long as the 
woman’s glaring eyes and face distorted 


OF CHARLES READE. 


by passion were before him, he inter- 
preted her words simply; but when he 
thought the matter over he said to him- 
self, <‘The evil-eye! That is all bosh; 
the girl is in Lady Bassett’s secrets ; 
and I am not to see young master: 
some day I shall know the reason why.”’ 


Sir Charles Bassett now belonged to 
the tribe of clucking cocks quite as much 
as his cousin had ever done; only Sir 
Charles had the good taste to confine 
his clucks.to his own first-floor. Here, 
to be sure, he richly indemnified himself 
for his self-denial abroad. He sat for 
hours at a time watching the boy on 
the ground at his knee, or in his nurse’s 
arms. 

And while he watched the infant with 
undisguised delight, Lady Bassett would 
watch ham with a sort of furtive and 
timid complacency. 

Yet at times she suffered from twinges 
of jealousy—a new complaint with her. 

I think I have mentioned that Sir 
Charles, at first, was annoyed at seeing 
his son and heir nursed by a woman of 
low condition. Well, he got over that 
feeling by degrees, and, aS soon as he did 
get over it, his sentiments took quite an 
opposite turn. A woman for whom he 
did very little, in his opinion—since what, 
in Heaven’s name, were a servant’s 
wages ?—he saw that woman do some- 
thing great for him; saw her nourish 
his son and heir from her own veins; 
the child had no other nurture; yet the 
father saw him bloom and thrive, and 
grow surprisingly. 

A weak observer, or a less enthusiastic 
parent, might have overlooked all this; 
but Sir Charles had naturally an observ- 
ant eye and an analytical mind, and this 
had been suddenly but effectually devel- 
oped by the asylum and his correspond- 
ence with Rolfe. 

He watched the nurse, then, and her 
maternal acts with a curious and grate- 
ful eye, and a certain reverence for her 
power. | 

He observed, too, that his child reacted 
on the woman: she had never sung in 
the house before; now she sang ravish- 


ete 


A THRRIBLE 


ingly—sang, in low, mellow, yet sonorous 
notes, some ditties that had lulled mediz- 
val barons in their cradles. 

And what had made her vocal made 
her beautiful at times. 

Before, she had appeared to him a 
handsome girl, with the hardish look 
of the lower classes; but now, when she 
sat in a sunny window, and lowered her 
black lashes on her nursling, with the 
mixed and delicious smile of an exuber- 
ant nurse relieving and relieved, she 
was soft, poetical, sculptorial, maternal, 
womanly. 

This species of contemplation, though 
half philosophical, half paternal, and 
quite innocent, gave Lady Bassett some 
Severe pangs. 

She hid them, however ; only she bided 
her time, and then suggested the pro- 
priety of weaning baby. 

But Mrs. Gosport got Sir Charles’s 
ear, and told him what magnificent 
children they reared in her village by 
not weaning infants till they were eigh- 
teen months old or so. 

By this means, and by crying to Lady 
Bassett, and representing her desolate 
condition with a husband at sea, she 
obtained a reprieve, coupled, however, 
with a good-humored assurance from 
Sir Charles that she was the greatest 
baby of the two. 

When the inevitable hour approached 
that was to dethrone her she took to 
reading the papers, and one day she read 
of a disastrous wreck, the Carbrea Castle 
—only seven saved out of a crew of twen- 
ty-three. She read the details carefully, 
and two days afterward she received a 
letter written by a shipmate of Mr. Gos- 
port’s, in a handwriting not very unlike 
her own, relating the sad wreck of the 
Carbrea Castle, and the loss of several 
good sailors, James Gosport for one. 

Then the house was filled with the 
wailing and weeping of the bereaved 
widow ; and at last came consolers and 
raised doubts; but then somebody re- 
membered to have seen the loss of that 
very ship in the paper. The paper was 
found, and the fatal truth was at once 
established. 


TEMPTATION. 143 


Upon this Mr. Bassett was weaned as 
quickly as possible, and the widow clothed 
in black at Lady Bassett’s expense, and 
everything in reason done to pet her and 
console her. 

But she cried bitterly, and said she 
would throw herself into the sea and 
follow her husband. 

Huntercombe was nowhere near the 
coast. 

At last, however, she relented, and con- 
cluded to remain on earth as dry-nurse to 
Mr. Bassett. 

Sir Charles did not approve this: it 
seemed unreasonable to turn a wet-nurse 
into a dry-nurse when that office was 
already occupied by a person her senior 
and more experienced. 

Lady Bassett agreed with him, but 
shrugged her shoulders and said, “ Two 
nurses will not hurt, and I suspect it will 
not be for long. Mary does not feel her 
husband’s loss one bit.’’ 

‘‘Surely you are mistaken. 
loud enough.”’ 

‘Too loud—much,”’ said Lady Bassett, 
dryly. 

Her perspicuity was not deceived. In 
a very short time Mr. Meyrick, unable to 
get her for his housekeeper, offered her 
marriage. 

‘‘What!’’ said she, ‘‘and James Gos- 
port not dead a month ? ”’ 

‘‘Say the word now, and take your own 
time,’’ said he. 

‘Well, I might do worse,’’ said she. 

About six weeks after this Drake came 
about her, and in tender tones of consola- 
tion suggested that it is much better for 
a pretty girl to marry one who plows the 
land than one who plows the sea. 

‘‘That is true,’”’ said Mary, with a 
sigh; ‘“‘I have found it to my sorrow.”’ 

After this Drake played a bit with 
her, and then relented, and one evening 
offered her marriage, expecting her to 
jump eagerly at his offer. 

“You be too late, young man,’ 
she, coolly; ‘I’m bespoke.”’ 

‘‘Doan’t ye say that! How can ye be 
bespoke ? Why, t’other hain’t been dead 
four months yet.’’ 

‘What o’ that? 


She howls 


2 


said 


This one spoke for 


144 WORKS 
me within a week. Why, our banns are 
to be cried to-morrow ; come to church 
and hear ’em; that will learn ye not to 
shilly-shally so next time.”’ 

“‘Next time!’ cried Drake, half blub- 
bering ; then, with a sudden roar, ‘‘ what, 
be you coming to market again, arter 
this ?” 

‘‘ Like enough: he isa deal older than I 
be. ’Tis Mr. Meyrick, if ye must know.”’ 

Now Mr. Meyrick was well-to-do, and 
so Drake was taken aback. 

‘¢Mr. Meyrick!” said he, and turned 
suddenly respectful. 

But presently a view of a rich widow 
flitted before his eye. 

“ Well,’? said he, “you shan’t throw 
it in my teeth again as I speak too late. 
I ask you now, and no time lost.’’ 

“What! am I to stop my banns, and 
jilt Farmer Meyrick for thee ?”’ 

‘Nay, nay. But I mean I’ll marry 
you, if you’ll marry me, aS soon as ever 
the breath is out of that dall’d old hunks’s 
body.’’ 

‘Well, well, Will Drake,’’ said Mary, 
gravely, “if I do outlive this one—and 
you bain’t married long afore—and_ if 
you keeps in the same mind as you be 
now—and lets me know it in good time— 
I’ll see about it.’ 

She gave a flounce that made her petti- 
coats whisk like a mare’s tail, and off to 
the kitchen, where she related the dia- 
logue with an appropriate reflection, the 
company containing several of either sex. 
‘* Dilly-Dally and Shilly-Shally, they be- 
longs to uS aS women be. I hate and 
despise a man as can’t make up his mind 
in half a minnut.”’ 

So the widow Gosport became Mrs. 
Meyrick, and lived in a farmhouse not 
quite a mile from the Hall. 

She used often to come to the Hall, 
and take a peep at her lamb: this was 
the name she gave Mr. Bassett long after 
he had ceased to be a child. 


About four years after the triumphant 
return to Huntercombe, Lady Bassett 
conceived a sudden coldness toward the 
little boy, though he was_ universally 
admired. 


OF CHARLES READE. 


She concealed this sentiment from Sir 
Charles, but not fromthe female ser- 
vants: and, from one to another, at last 
it came round to Sir Charles. He dis- 
believed it utterly at first; but, the hint 
having been given him, he paid attention, 
and discovered there was, at all events, 
some truth in it. 

He awaited his opportunity and _ re- 
monstrated: ‘‘My dear Bella, am I mis- 
taken, or do I really observe a falling oif 
in your tenderness for your child? ”’ 

Lady Bassett looked this way and it, 
as if she meditated flight, but at last 
she resigned herself, and said, ‘ Yes, 
dear Charles; my heart is quite cold to 
him.’’ 

“Good Heavens, Bella! | But why? 
Is not this the same little angel that 
came to our help in trouble, that com- 
forted me even before his birth, when my 
mind was morbid, to say the least ? ”’ 

‘IT suppose he is the same,”’’ said she, 
in a tone impossible to convey by descrip- 
tion of mine. 

‘That is a strange answer.”’ 

“If he is, J am changed.’’ And this 
she said doggedly and unlike herself. 

“What!’? said Sir Charles, very 
gravely, and with a sort of awe: ‘‘can 
a woman withdraw her affection from 


her child, her innocent child? If so, 
my turn may come next.”’ 
‘“¢Oh, Charles! Charles!” and the 


tears began to well. 

‘“Why, who can be secure after this? 
What is so stable as a mother’s love? 
If that is not rooted too deep for gusts 
of caprice to blow it away, in Heaven’s 
name, what is?”’ 

No answer to that but tears. 

Sir Charles looked at her very long, 
attentively, and seriously, and said not 
another syllable. 

But his dropping so suddenly a subject 
of this importance was rather suspicious, 
and Lady Bassett was too shrewd not to 
see that. — 

They watched each other. 

But with this difference: Sir Charles 
could not conceal his anxiety, whereas 
the lady appeared quite tranquil. 

One day Sir Charles said, cheerfully, 


| 


| 


‘*PLL TEACH YOU TO COME AND MOCK ME.,’’ 
—A Terrible Temptation, Chapter XX XV. 


Reape, Volume Eight. 


, ww ey 
y, Or AV 
x & wnt 


A THRRIBLE 


*“Who do you think dines here to-mor- 
row, and stays all night? Dr. Suaby.”’ 

‘“‘By invitation, dear?’’ asked Lady 
Bassett, quietly. 

Sir Charles colored a little, and said, 
quietly, “‘ Yes.”’ 

Lady Bassett made no remark, and it 
was impossible to tell by her face whether 
the visit was agreeable or not. 

Some time afterward, however, she 
said, “Whom shall I ask to meet Dr. 
Suaby ?”’ 

‘* Nobody, for Heaven’s sake !”’ 

* Will not that be dull for him? ’”’ 

‘‘T hope not.’’ 

‘You will have plenty to say to him, 
eh, darling ? ”’ 

«We never yet lacked topics. Whether 
or no, his is a mind I choose to drink 
neat.”’ | 

‘Drink him neat? ”’ 

‘¢Undiluted with rural minds.”’ 

SS Ohi be?” 

She uttered that monosyllable very 
dryly, and said no more. 

Dr. Suaby came next day, and dined 
with them, and Lady Bassett was charm- 
ing; but rather earlier than usual she 
said, ‘‘ Now Iam sure you and Dr. Suaby 
must have many things to talk about,”’’ 
and retired, casting back an arch, and 
almost a cunning smile. 

The door closed on her, the smile fled, 
and a somber look of care and suffering 
took its place. 

Sir Charles entered at once on what 
was next his heart, told Dr. Suaby he 
was in some anxiety, and asked him 
if he had observed anything in Lady 
Bassett. 

“Nothing new,”’’ 
‘charming as ever.’’ 

Then Sir Charles confided to Dr. Suaby, 
in terms of deep feeling and anxiety, what 
I have coldly told the reader. 

Dr. Suaby looked a little grave, and 
took time to think before he spoke. 

At last he delivered an opinion, of which 
this is the substance, though not the ex- 
act words. 

**Tt is sudden and unnatural, and I can- 
not say it does not partake of mental 
aberration. If the patient was a man 


said Dr. Suaby ; 


TEMPTATION. 145 
I should fear the most serious results ; 
but here we have to take into account 
the patient’s sex, her nature, and her 
present condition. Lady Bassett has 
always appeared to me a very remark- 
able woman. She has no mediocrity in 
anything; understanding keen, percep- 
tion wonderfully swift, heart large and 
sensitive, nerves high strung, sensibilities 
acute. A person of her sex, tuned so high 
as this, is always subject, more or less, to 
hysteria. It is controlled by her intelli- 
gence and spirit; but she is now, for the 
time being, in a physical condition that 
has often deranged less sensitive women 
than she is. I believe this about the 
boy to be a hysterical delusion, which 
will pass away when her next child is 
born. That is to say, she will probably 
ignore her first-born, and everything else, 
for a time; but these caprices, springing 
in reality from the body rather than the 
mind, cannot endure forever. When she 
has several grown-up children the first- 
born will be the favorite. It comes to 
that at last, my good friend.’’ 

«These are the words of wisdom,”’’ 
said Sir Charles; ‘‘God bless you for 
them ! ” 

After a while he said, ‘‘Then what you 
advise is simply—patience ? ”’ 

‘“No, I don't say that. With such a 
large house as this, and your resources, 
you might easily separate them before 
the delusion grows any farther. Why 
risk a calamity ?’’ 

«A calamity ?”’ and Sir Charles began 
to tremble. 

‘She is only cold to the child as yet. 

he might go farther, and fancy she hated 
it. Obsta principiis : that is my motto. 
Not that I really think, for a moment, 
the child is in danger. Lady Bassett 
has mind to control her nerves with; 
but why run the shadow of a chance ?”’ 

‘‘T will not run the shadow of a 
chance,’’ said Sir Charles, resolutely ; 
‘let us come upstairs: my decision is 
taken.”’ 

The very next day Sir Charles called 
on Mrs. Meyrick, and asked if he could 
come to any arrangement with her to 
lodge Mr. Bassett and his nurse under 


146 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


her roof. ‘‘The boy wants change of 
air,’’? said he. 

Mrs. Meyrick jumped at the proposal, 
but declined all terms. ‘‘ No,’’ said she, 
*‘the child I have suckled shall never pay 
me for his lodging. Why should he, sir, 
when I’d pay you to let him come, if I 
wasn’t afeard of offending you?”’ 

Sir Charles was touched at this, and, 
being a gentleman of tact, said, ‘‘ You 
are very good: well, then, I must remain 
your debtor for the present.”’ 

He then took his leave, but she walked 
with him a few yards, just as far as the 
wicket gate that separated her little front 
garden from the high-road. 

“Tl hope,’”’ said she, “my lady will 
come and see me when my lamb is with 
me; a sight of her would be good for 
sore eyes. She have never been here but 
once, and then she did not get out of her 
carriage.”’ 

‘* Humph !’’ said Sir Charles, apologet- 
ically ; ‘‘she seldom goes out now; you 
understand.”’ 

‘‘Oh, I’ve heard, sir; and I do put up 
imy prayers for her; for my lady has 
been a good friend to me, sir, and if you 
will believe me, I often sets here and 
longs for a sight of her, and her sweet 
eyes, and her hair like sunshine, that I’ve 
had in my hand so often. Well, sir, I 
hope it will be a girl this time, a little 
girl with golden hair; that’s what I 
wants this time. They’ll be the prettiest 
pair in England.” 

‘¢ With all my heart,’’ said Sir Charles ; 
« sirl or boy, I don’t care which; but I’d 
give a few thousands if it was here, and 
the mother safe.’’ 

He hurried away, ashamed of having 
uttered the feelings of his heart to a 
farmer’s wife. ‘To avoid discussion, he 
sent Mrs. Millar and the boy off all in a 
hurry, and then told Lady Bassett what 
he had done. 

She appeared much distressed at that, 
and asked what she had done. 

He soothed her, and said she was not 
to blame at all; and she must not blame 
him either. He had done it for the best. 

‘* After all, you are the master,’’ said 
she, submissively. 


““T am,’’ said he, ‘‘and men will be 
tyrants, you know.”’ 

Then she flung her arm round her 
tyrant’s neck, and there was an end of 
the discussion. 

One day he inquired for her, and heard, 
to his nosmall satisfaction, she had driven 
to Mrs. Meyrick’s, with a box of things 
for Mr. Bassett. She stayed at the farm- 
house all day, and Sir Charles felt sure 
he had done the right thing. 

Mrs. Meyrick found out to her cost the 
difference between a nursling and a ram- 
pageous little boy. 

Her lamb, as she called him, was now 
a young monkey, vigorous, active, rest- 
less, and, unfortunately, as strong on his 
pins as most boys of six. It took two 
women to look after him, and smart ones 
too, so swiftly did he dash off into some 
mischief or other. At last Mrs. Meyrick 
simplified matters in some degree by lock- 
ing the large gate, and even the small 
wicket, and ordering all the farm people 
and milkmaids to keep an eye on him, 
and bring him straight to her if he should 
stray, for he seemed to hate in-doors. 
Never was such a boy. 

Nevertheless, such as had not the care 
of him admired the child for his beauty 
and his assurance. He seemed to regard 
the whole human race as one family, of 
which he was the rising head. The mo- 
ment he caught sight of a human being 
he dashed at it and into conversation by 
one unbroken movement. 

Now children in general are too apt 
to hide their intellectual treasures from 
strangers by shyness. 

One day this ready converser was 
standing on the steps of the house, when 
a gentleman came to the wicket gate, 
and looked over into the garden. 

Young master darted to the gate di- 
rectly, and getting his foot on the lowest 
bar and his hands on the spikes, gave 
tongue. 

‘‘*Who are you? I’m Mr. Bassett. I 
don’t live here; I’m only staying. My 
home is Huncom Hall. I’m to have it 
for myself when papa dies. I didn’t 
know dat till Icome here. How old are 
you? I’m half past four—’’ 


A TERRIBLE 


A loud scream, a swift rustle, and Mr. 
Bassett was clutched up by Mrs. Meyrick, 
who snatched him away with a wild 
glance of terror and defiance, and bore 
him swiftly into the house, with words 
ringing in her ears that cost Mr. Bassett 
dear, he being the only person she could 
punish. She sat down on a bench, flung 
young master across her knee in a min- 
ute, and bestowed such a smacking on 
him as far transcended his wildest dreams 
of the weight, power, and pertinacity of 
the human arm. ; 

The words Richard Bassett had shot 
her flying with were these: 

“Too late! I’ve SEEN THE PARSON’S 
BRAT.”’ 


Richard Bassett mounted his horse and 
rode over to Wheeler, for he could no 
longer wheedle the man of law over to 
Highmore, and | will very briefly state 
why. 

Ist. About three years ago an old lady, 
one of his few clients, left him three thou- 
sand pounds, just reward of a very little 
law and a vast deal of gossip. 

2d. The head solicitor of the place got 
old and wanted a partner. Wheeler 
bought himself in, and thericeforth took 
his share of a good business, and by his 
energy enlarged it, though he never could 
found one for himself. 

3d. He married a wife. 

4th. She was a pretty woman, and 
blessed with jealousy of a just and impar- 
tial nature: she was equally jealous of 
women, men, books, business—anything 
that took her husband from her. 

No more sleeping out at Highmore; no 
more protracted potations ; no more bach- 
elor tricks for Wheeler. He still valued 
his old client and welcomed him; but the 
venue was changed, so to speak. 

Richard Bassett was kept waiting in 
the outer office; but when he did get in 
he easily prevailed on Wheeler to send 
the next client or two to his partner, and 
give him a full hearing. 

Then he opened his business. ‘‘ Well,’’ 
said he, ‘‘ I’ve seen him at last !”’ 

‘‘Seen him? seen whom ?”’ 

“The boy they have set up to rob my 


THMPTATION, 147 
boy of the estate. I’ve seen him, Wheeler, 
seen him close; and HE’S AS BLACK AS MY 
HAT,” 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 


WHEELER, instead of being thunder- 
stricken, said quietly, ‘‘Oh, ishe? Well ?”’ 

‘“‘Sir Charles is lighter than I am: 
Lady Bassett has a skin like satin, and 
red hair.’’ 

“Red! say auburn gilt. 
such lovely hair.’’ 

‘«“Well,’? said Richard, impatiently, 
‘“then the boy has eyes like sloes, and 
a brown skin, like an Italian, and black 
hair almost; it will be quite.’’ 

« Well,’? said Wheeler, “it is not so 
very uncommon for a dark child to be 
born of fair parents, or vice versa. I 
once saw an urchin that was like neither 
father nor mother, but the image of his 
father’s grandfather, that died eighty 
years before he was born. They used to 
hold him up to the portrait.”’ 

Said Bassett, ‘‘ Will you admit that it 
is uncommon ?”’ 

‘“Not so uncommon as for a high-bred 
lady, living in the country, and adored 
by her husband, to trifle with her mar- 
riage vow, for that is what you are driv- 
ing at.’’ 

‘Then we have to decide between two 
improbabilities : will you grant me that, 
Mr. Wheeler ?’’ 

oY esis 

«Then suppose I can prove fact upon 
fact, and coincidence upon coincidence, 
all tending one way! Are you so preju- 
diced that nothing will convince you ? ”’ 

“No. But it will take a great deal: 
that lady’s face is full of purity, and she 
fought us like one who loved her hus- 
band.”’ 

‘Fronti nulla fides: and as for her 
fighting, her infidelity was the weapon 
she defeated us with. Will you hear 
me ?”’ 


I never saw 


148 WORKS 

“Yes, yes; but pray stick to facts, and 
not conjectures. ”’ 

“Then don’t interrupt me with child- 
ish arguments: 

“ Hact 1.—Both reputed parents fair ; 
the boy as black as the ace of spades. 

‘Fact 2.—A handsome young fellow 
was always buzzing about her ladyship, 
and he was a parson, and ladies are re- 
markably fond of parsons. 

‘Fact 3.—This parson was of Italian 
breed, dark, like the boy. 

“ Fact 4.—This dark young man left 
Huntercombe one week, and my lady left 
it the next, and they were both in the 
city of Bath at one time. 

‘*Hact 5.—The lady went from Bath 
to London. The dark young man went 
from Bath to London.” 

‘‘None of this is new to me,” said 
Wheeler, quietly. 

‘“No; but itis the rule, in estimating 
coincidences, that each fresh one multi- 
plies the value of the others. Now the 
boy looking so Italian is a new coinci- 
dence, and so is what Lam going to tell 
you—at last 1 have found the medical 
man who attended Lady Bassett in Lon- 
don.”’ 

Bee he ihe? 

“ Yes, sir; and 1 have learned Fact 6. 
—Her ladyship rented a house, but hired 
no servants, and engaged no nurse. She 
had no attendant but a lady’s maid, no 
servant but a sort of charwoman. 

‘* Fact 7.—She dismissed this doctor 
unusually soon, and gave hima very large 
fee. 

‘«* Fact 8.—She concealed her address 
from her husband.” 

‘¢Oh! can you prove that ?”’ 

‘‘Certainly. Sir Charles came up to 
town, and had to hunt for her, came to 
this very medical man, and asked for the 
address his wife had not given him; but 
lo! when he got there the bird was 
flown. 

‘* Fact 9.—Following the same system 
of concealment, my lady levanted from 
London within ten days of her confine- 
ment. 

“Now put all these coincidences to- 
gether. Don’t you see that she had a 


OF CHARLES 


READE. 


lover, and that he was about her in Lon- 
don and other places? Stop! Fact 10. 
—Those two were married for years, and 
had no child but this equivocal one ; and 
now four years and a half have passed, 
during all which time they have had 
none, and the young parson has been 
abroad during that period.”’ 

Wheeler was staggered and perplexed 
by this artful array of coincidences. 

‘“Now advise me,’’ said Bassett. 

“It is not so easy. Of course if Sir 
Charles was to die, you could claim the 
estate, and give thema great deal of pain 
and annoyance; but the burden of proof 
would always rest on you. My advice is 
not to breathe a syllable of this; but get 
a good detective, and push your inquiries 
a little further among house agents, and 
the women they put into houses; find that 
charwoman, and see if you can pick up 
anything more.”’ 

“Do you know such a thing as an able 
detective ?”’ 

**T know one that will work if I instruct 
hinges 

“Instruct him, then.’’ 

Sod mavalle’4 


CHAPTER XXXYV., 


LADY BASSETT, as her time of trial drew 
near, became despondent. 

She spoke of the future, and tried to 
pierce it; and in all these little loving 
speculations and anxieties there was no 
longer any mention of herself. 

This meant that she feared her husband 
was about to lose her. I put the fear in 
the very form it took in that gentle 
breast, 

Possessed with this dread, so natural 
to her situation, she set her house in or- 
der, and left her little legacies of clothes 
and jewels, without the help of a lawyer ; 
for Sir Charles, she knew, would respect 
her lightest wish. 

To him she left her all, except these 


A THRRIBLE 


trifles, and, above all—a manuscript book. 
It was the history of her wedded life. 
Not the bare outward history ; but such 
a record of a sensitive woman’s heart as 
no male writer’s pen can approach. 

It was the nature of her face and her 
tongue to conceal; but here, on this paper, 
She laid bare her heart; here her very 
subtlety operated, not to hide, but to dis- 
sect herself and her motives. 

But oh, what it cost her to pen this 
faithful record of her love, her trials, her 
doubts, her perplexities, her agonies, her 
temptations, and her crime! Often she 
laid down the pen, and hid her face in her 
hands. Often the scalding tears ran down 
that scarlet face. Often she writhed at 
her desk, and wrote on, sighing and 
moaning. Yet she persevered to the end. 
It was the grave that gave her the power. 
“¢ When he reads this,’’ she said, ‘‘ I shall 
be in my tomb. Men make excuses for 
the dead. My Charles will forgive me 
when [am gone. He will know I loved 
him to desperation.”’ 

It took her many days to write; it was 
quite a thick quarto; so much may a 
woman feel in a year or two; and, need I 
say that, to the reader of that volume, 
the mystery of her conduct was all made 
clear as daylight; clearer far, as regards 
the revelation of mind and feeling, than I, 
dealer in broad facts, shall ever make it, 
for want of a woman’s mental microscope 
and delicate brush. 

And when this record was finished, she 
wrapped it in paper, and sealed it with 
many seals, and wrote on it, 


“Only for my husband’s eye. 
From her who loved him not wisely, 
but too well.” 


And she took other means that even the 
superscription should never be seen of any 
other eye but his. It was some little 
comfort to her, when the book was 
written. 

She never prayed to live. But she used 
to pray, fervently, piteously, that her 
child might live, and bea comfort and 
joy to his father. 


The person employed by Wheeler dis- 


TEMPTATION. 149 
covered the house agent, and the woman 
he had employed. 

But these added nothing to the evidence 
Bassett had collected. 

At last, however, this woman, under 
the influence of a promised reward, dis- 
covered a person who was likely to know 
more about the matter—viz., the woman 
who was in the house with Lady Bassett 
at the very time. 

But this woman scented gold directly : 
so she held mysterious language ; declined 
to say a word to the officer ; but intimated 
that she knew a great deal, and that the 
matter was, in truth, well worth looking 
into, and she could tell some strange 
tales, if it was worth her while. 

This information was sent to Bassett ; 
he replied that the woman only wanted 
money for her intelligence, and he did 
not blame her; he would see her next 
time he went to town, and felt sure she 
would complete his chain of evidence. 
This put Richard Bassett into extrava- 
gant spirits. He danced his little boy 
on his knee, and said, ‘‘I’ll run this 
little horse against the parson’s brat ; 
five to one, and no takers.’’ 

Indeed, his exultation was so loud and 
extravagant that it jarred on gentle Mrs. 
Bassett. As for Jessie, the Scotch ser- 
vant, she shook her head, and said the 
master was fey. 

In the morning he started for London, 
still so exuberant and excited that the 
Scotch woman implored her mistress not 
to let him go; there would be an accident 
on the railway, or something. But Mrs. 
Bassett knew her husband too well to in- 
terfere with his journeys. 

Before he drove off he demanded his 
little boy. 

‘“‘He must kiss me,”’ said he, ‘“‘for I’m 
going to work for him. D’ye hear that, 
Jane? This day makes him heir of Hun- 
tercombe and Bassett.’’ 

The nurse brought word that Master 
Bassett was not very well this morn- 
ing. 

* Let us look at him,’’ said Bassett. 

He got out of his gig, and went to the 
nursery. He found his little boy had a 
dry cough, with a little flushing. 


150 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


‘*Tt is not much,’’ said he; “ but I’ll 
send the doctor over from the town.”’ 

He did so, and himself proceeded up to 
London. 

The doctor came, and finding the boy 
labored in breathing, administered a full 
dose of ipecacuanha. This relieved the 
child for the time; but about four in the 
afternoon he was distressed again, and 
began to cough with a peculiar grating 
sound. 

Then there was a cry of dismay— 
“The croup!’’ The doctor was gone 
for, and a letter posted to Richard 
Bassett, urging him to come back di- 
rectly. 

The doctor tried everything, even mer- 
cury, but could not check the fatal dis- 
charge; it stiffened into a still more fatal 
membrane. 

When Bassett returned next afternoon, 
in great alarm, he found the poor child 
thrusting its fingers into its mouth, in 
a vain attempt to free the deadly ob- 
struction. 

A warm bath and strong emetics were 
now administered, and great relief ob- 
tained. The patient even ate and drank, 
and asked leave to get up and play with 
anew toy he had. But, as often happens 
in this disorder, a Severe relapse soon 
came, with a spasm of the glottis so 
violent and prolonged that the patient 
at last resigned the struggle. Then 
pain ceased forever; the heavenly smile 
came; the breath went; and nothing was 
left in the little white bed but a fair piece 
of tinted clay, that must return to the 
dust, and carry thither all the pride, the 
hopes, the boasts of the stricken father, 
who had schemed, and planned, and 
counted without Him in whose hands 
are the issues of life and death. 

As for the child himself, his lot was 
a happy one, if we could but see what 
the world is really worth. He was al- 
ways a bright child, that never cried, 
nor complained: his first trouble was 
his last; one day’s pain, then bliss 
eternal: he never got poisoned by his 
father’s spirit of hate, but loved and 
was beloved during his little lifetime ; 
and, dying, he passed from his Noah’s 


ark to an inheritance a thousand times 
richer than Huntercombe, Bassett, and 
all his cousin’s lands. 


The little grave was dug, the bell 
tolled, and a man bowed double with 
grief saw his child and his ambition laid 
in the dust. 

Lady Bassett heard the bell tolled, and 
spoke but two words: ‘‘ Poor woman !”’ 

She might well say so. Mrs. Bassett 
was in the same condition as herself, yet 
this heavy blow must fall on her. 

As for Richard Bassett, he sat at 
home, bowed down and stupid with 
grief. 

Wheeler came one day to console him ; 
but, at the sight of him, refrained from 
idle words. He sat down by him for an 
hour in silence. Then he got up and said, 
“‘ Good-by.”’ 

“Thank you, old friend, for not insult- 
ing me,’’ said Bassett, in a broken voice. 

Wheeler took his hand, and turned 
away his head, and so went away, with 
a tear in his eye. } 

A fortnight after this he came again, 
and found Bassett in the same attitude, 
but not in the same leaden stupor. On 
the contrary, he was in a state of tremor; 
he had lost, under the late blow, the 
sanguine mind that used to carry him 
through everything. 

The doctor was upstairs, and his wife’s 
fate trembled in the balance. 

““Stay by me,” said he, ‘‘for all my 
nerve is gone. I’m afraid I shall lose 
her; for [have just begun to value her; 
and that is how God deals with his 
creatures—the merciful God, as they call 
him," 

Wheeler thought it rather hard God 
Almighty should be blamed because Dick 
Bassett had taken eight years to find out 
his wife’s merit; but he forbore to say so. 
He said kindly that he would stay. 

Now while they sat in trying suspense 
the church-bells struck up a merry peal. 

Bassett started violently and his eyes 
gave a strange glare. ‘‘That’s the 
other!’’ said he; for he had heard 
about Lady Bassett by this time. 

Then he turned pale. ‘‘ They ring for 


i i i 


A TERRIBLE 


him: then they are sure to toll for 
me.”’ 

This foreboding was natural enough in 
aman so blinded by egotism as to fancy 
that all creation, and the Creator him- 
self, must take a side in Bassett vu. Bas- 
sett. 

Nevertheless, events did not justify 
that foreboding. The bells had scarcely 
done ringing for the happy event at Hun- 
tercombe, when joyful feet were heard 
running on the stairs; joyful voices 
clashed together in the passage, and in 
came a female servant with joyful tid- 
ings. Mrs. Bassett was safe, and the 
child in the world. ‘‘ The loveliest little 
girl you ever saw! ”’ 

*¢ A girl !”’ cried Richard Bassett with 
contemptuous amazement. Even his 
melancholy forebodings had not gone 
that length. ‘‘And what have they 
got at Huntercombe?”’ 

‘Qh, it is a boy, sir, there.”’ 

‘Of course.”’ 

The ringers heard, and sent one of 
their number to ask him if they should 
ring. 

“What for?” asked Bassett with a 
nasty glittering eye; and then with sud- 
den fury he seized a large piece of wood 
from the basket to fling at his insulter. 
<‘T’ll teach you to come and mock me.”’ 

The ringer vanished, ducking. 

«‘Gently,’? said Wheeler, ‘‘ gently.”’ 

Bassett chucked the wood back into the 
basket, and sat down gloomily, saying, 
‘Then how dare he come and talk about 
ringing bells for a girl? To think that I 
should have all this fright, and my wife 
all this trouble—for a girl !”’ 


It was no time to talk of business then ; 
but about a fortnight afterward Wheeler 
said, “‘Il took the detective off, to save 
you expense.”’ 

“Quite right,’’ said Bassett, wearily. 

‘“] gave you the woman’s address; so 
the matter is in your hands now, I con- 
sider.”’ 

““Yes,”’ said Bassett, wearily. 
no further in it.”’ 


“<< Move 


“Certainly not; and, frankly, I should 


be glad to see you abandon it.’’ 


TEMPTATION. 151 

*‘T have abandoned it. Why should 
I stir the mud now? I and mine are 
thrown out forever ; the only question is, . 
shall a son of Sir Charles or the parson’s 
son inherit? I’m for the wrongful heir. 
Ay,’ he cried, starting up, and beating 
the air with his fists in sudden fury, 
‘since the right Bassetts are never to 
have it, let the wrong Bassetts be thrown 
out, at all events; I’m on my back, but 
Sir Charles is no better off; a bastard 
will succeed him, thanks to that cursed 
woman who defeated me.’’ 

This turn took Wheeler by surprise. It 
also gave him real pain. ‘‘ Bassett,’’ 
said he, “I pity you. What sort of a 
life has yours been for the last eight 
years? Yet, when there’s no fuel left for 
war and hatred, you blow the embers. 
You are incurable.’’ 

‘el vam asaic Richardes<| [bt hace 
those two with my last breath and curse 
them in my last prayer.”’ 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 


LaDy BASSETT’s foreboding, like most 
of our insights into the future, were con- 
futed by the event. 

She became the happy mother of a 
flaxen-haired boy. She insisted on nurs- 
ing him herself ; and the experienced per- 
sons who attended her raised no objection. 

In connection with this she gave Sir 
Charles a peck, not very severe, but sud- 
den, and remarkable as the only one on 
record. 

He was contemplating her and her 
nursling with the deepest affection, and 
happened to say, ‘‘ My own Bella, what 
delight it gives me to see you!”’ 

*‘Yes,’’ said she, “‘ we will have only 
one mother this time, will we, my dar- 
ling ? and it shall be Me.’’ Then sudden- 
ly, turning her head like a snake, “‘ Oh, I 
saw the looks you gave that woman !”’ 

This was the famous peck; adminis- 


152 


tered in return for a look that he had be- 
stowed on Mary Gosport not more than 
five years ago. 

Sir Charles would, doubtless, have bled 
to death on the spot, but either he had 
never been aware how he looked, or time 
and business had obliterated the impres- 
sion, for he was unaffectedly puzzled, and 
said, ‘° What woman do you mean, dear?”’ 

‘“No matter, darling,’’ said Lady Bas- 
sett, who had already repented her dire 
severity : ‘“‘all I say is that a nurse is 
a rival I could not endure now; and an- 
other thing, I do believe those wet-nurses 
give their disposition to the child: it is 
dreadful to think of.’’ 

‘‘Well, if so, baby is safe. He will be 
the most amiable boy in England.”’ 

‘He shall be more amiable than I am 
—scolding my husband of husbands ; ’’ 
and she leaned toward him, baby and 
all, for a kiss from his lips. 

We say at school ‘‘ Seniores priores ’’— 
‘‘let favor go by seniority ;’’ but where 
babies adorn the scene, it is ‘‘ juniores 
priores ’’ with that sex to which the very 
young are confided. 

To this rule, as might be expected, 
Lady Bassett furnished no exception ; she 
was absorbed in baby, and trusted Mr. 
Bassett a good deal to his attendant, 
who bore an excellent character for care 
and attention. 

Now Mr. Bassett was strong on his 
pins and in his will, and his nurse-maid, 
after all, was young; so he used to take 
his walks nearly every day to Mrs. Mey- 
rick’s: she petted him enough, and spoiled 
him in every way, while the nurse-maid 
was flirting with the farm-servants out 
of sight. 

Sir Charles Bassett was devoted to the 
boy, and used always to have him to his 
study in the morning, and to the draw- 
ing-room after dinner, when the party 
was small, and that happened much oft- 
. ener now than heretofore; but at other 
hours he did not look after him, being a 
business man, and considering him at 
that age to be under his mother’s care. 

One day the only guest was Mr. Rolfe; 
he was staying in the house for three 
days, upon a condition suggested by him- 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


self—viz., that he might enjoy his friends’ 
society in peace and comfort, and not be 
set to roll the stone of conversation up 
some young lady’s back, and obtain 
monosyllables in reply, faintly lisped 
amid a clatter of fourteen knives and 
forks. As he would not leave his writ- 
ing-table on any milder terms, they took 
him on these. 

After dinner in came Mr. Bassett, 
erect, and. a proud nurse with little 
Compton, just able to hold his nurse’s 
gown and toddle. 

Rolfe did not care for small children ; 
he just glanced at the angelic, fair-haired 
infant, but his admiring gaze rested on 
the elder boy. 

“Why, what 
prince ? ”’ 

The boy ran to him directly. 
are you?”’ 

‘* Rolfe the writer. 
Gipsy King? ”’ 

‘No; but I am very fond of gypsies. 
I’m Mister Bassett; and when papa dies 
I shall be Sir Charles Bassett.”’ 

Sir Charles laughed at this with pa- 
ternal fatuity, especially as the boy’s 
name happened to be Reginald Francis, 
after his grandfather. 

Rolfe smiled satirically, for these little 
speeches from children did much to recon- 
cile him to his lot. 

‘‘Meantime,’’ said he, “‘let us feed off 
him; for it may be forty years before we 
can dance over his grave. First let us 
see what is the unwholesomest thing on 
the table.”’ 

He rose, and to the infinite delight of 
Mr. Bassett, and even of Master Comp- 
ton, who pointed and crowed from his 
mother’s lap, he got up on his chair, and 
put on a pair of spectacles to look. 

‘“Hurekal*yesaid the; -‘*beholdswthab 
aish by Lady Bassett; those are marrons 
glacés ; fetch them here, and let us go in 
for a fit of the gout at once.’’ 

**Gout! what’s that?’’ inquired Mr. 
Bassett. 

‘‘Don’t ask me.”’ 

“You don’t know. 

“Not know! What, didn’t I tell you 
I was Rolfe the writer? Writers know 


is here—an _ Oriental 
‘¢ Who 


Who are you—the 


A TERRIBLE 


- everything. That is what makes them 
so modest.’ 

Mr. Bassett was now unnaturally silent 
for five minutes, munching chestnuts ; 
this enabled his guests to converse ; but 
as soon as he had cleared his plate, he 
cut right across the conversation, with 
that savage contempt for all topics but 
his own which characterizes gentlemen 
of his age, and says he to Rolfe, ‘‘ You 
know everything? Then what’s a par- 
son’s brat? ”’ 

“Well, that’s the one thing | don’t 
know,’’ said Rolfe; ‘‘but a brat I take 
to be a boy who interrupts ladies and 
gentlemen with nonsense when they are 
talking sense.”’ 

‘“*T am very much obliged to you, Mr. 
Rolfe,”’ said Lady Bassett. ‘‘That re- 
mark was very much needed.”’ 

Then she called Reginald to her, and 
lectured him, sotto voce, to the same 
tune. 

‘“¢ You old bachelors are rather hard,”’ 
said Sir Charles, not very well pleased. 

“We are obliged to be; you parents 
are so soft. After all, it is no wonder. 
What a superb boy it is !—Here is nurse. 
I’m so sorry. Now we shall be cabined, 
cribbed, confined to rational conversation, 
and I shall not be expected to—(good- 
night, little flaxen angel; good-by, hand- 
some and loquacious demon; kiss and be 
friends)—expected to know, all in a min- 
ute, what is a parson’s brat. By-the-by, 
talking of parsons, what has become of 
Angelo? ”’ 

“He has been away a good many years. 
Consumption, I hear.’’ 

‘“‘He was a fine-built fellow too; was 
he not, Lady Bassett ? ”’ 

**T don’t know ; but he was beautifully 
strong. I think I see him now carrying 
dear Charles in his arms all down the 
garden.”’ 

‘“ Ah, you see he was raised in a uni- 
versity that does not do things by halves, 
but trains both body and mind, as they 
did at Athens; for the union of study 
and athletic sports is spoken of asa 
novelty, but it is only a return to an- 
tiquity.”’ 

Here letters were brought by the 


TEMPTATION. 153 
second post. Sir Charles glanced at 
his, and sent them to his study. Lady 
Bassett had but one. She said, ‘‘ May 
I?’ to both gentlemen, and then opened 
it. 

‘“‘How strange!’’ said she. ‘It is 
from Mr. Angelo: just a line to say he 
is coming home quite cured.’’ 

She began this composedly, but blushed 
afterward—blushed quite red. 

‘* May 1?’’ said she, and tossed it deli- 
cately half-way to Rolfe. He handed it 
to Sir Charles. 

Some remarks were then made about 
the coincidence, and nothing further 
passed worth recording at that time. 

Next day Lady Bassett, with instinc- 
tive curiosity, asked Master Reginald 
how he came to put such a question as 
that to Mr. Rolfe. 

‘Because I wanted to know.”’ 

‘But what put such words into your 
head? I never heard a gentleman say 
such words; and you must never say 
them again, Reginald.’’ 

‘Tell me what it means, and I won’t,’’ 
said he. 

‘“Oh,’’ said Lady Bassett, “since you 
bargain with me, sir, I must bargain 
with you. Tell me first where you ever 
heard such words.’’ 

‘‘ When I was staying at nurse’s. 
that was jolly.’’ 

“You like that better than being 
here ?”’ 

SR VCS Ms 

‘¢T am sorry for that. Well, dear, did 
nurse say that? Surely not ?’’ 

‘*Oh, no; it was the man.’’ 

‘What man ?’’ 

“Why, the man that came to the gate 
one morning, and talked to me, and I 
talked to him, and that nasty nurse ran 
out and caught us, and carried me in, 
and gave me such a hiding, and all for 
nothing.”’ 

‘A hiding! What words the poor 
child picks up! But I don’t understand 
why nurse should beat you.”’ 

“For speaking to the man. She said 
he was a bad man, and she would kill me 
if ever I spoke to him again.” 

‘Oh, it was a bad man, and said bad 


Ah, 


154 WORKS 
words—to somebody he was quarreling 
with ?”’ 

‘““No, he said them to nurse because 
she took me away.’’ 

“What did he say, Reginald ?’”’ asked 
Lady Bassett, becoming very grave and 
thoughtful all at once. 

‘* He said, ‘ That’s too late; 
the parson’s brat.’ ”’ 

A Onn | 

“And I’ve asked nurse again and 
again what it meant, but she won’t tell 
me. She only says the man is a liar, and 
lam not to say it again; and so I never 
did say it again—for a long time; but 
last night, when Rolfe the writer said he 
knew everything, it struck my head— 
what is the matter, mamma ? ”’ 

‘Nothing ; nothing.’’ 

‘You look so white. Are you ill, 
mamma ?’’ and he went to put his arms 
round her, which was a mighty rare 
thing with him. 

She trembled a good deal, and did not 
either embrace him or repel him. She 
only trembled. 

After some time she recovered herself 
enough to say, in a voice and with a man- 
ner that impressed itself at once on this 
sharp boy: ‘‘ Reginald, your nurse was 
quite right. Understand this: the man 
was your enemy—and mine; the words 
he said you must not say again. It 
would be like taking up dirt and fling- 
ing some on your own face and some 
on mine.”’ 

‘‘) won’t do that,’’ said the boy, firmly. 
‘Are you afraid of the man that you 
look so white ? ”’ 

‘«¢ A man with a woman’s HOR gue—who 
can help fearing? ’’ 

‘Don’t you be afraid; as soon as I’m 
big enough, [ll kill him.’’ 

Lady Bassett looked with surprise at 
the child, he uttered this resolve with 
such a steady resolution. 

She drew him to her, and kissed him 
on the forehead. 

‘“No, Reginald,’’ said she; ‘‘ we must 
not shed blood; it is as nicked to kill 
our enemies as to kill any one else. But 
never speak to him, never even listen to 
him; if he tries to speak to you, run 


I’ve seen 


OF CHARLES READE. 


away from ait, and don’t let him—he is . 
our enemy.’ 

That same day she went to Mrs. Mey- 
rick, to examine her. But she found the 
boy had told her all there was to tell. 

“Mrs. Meyrick, whose affection for her 
was not diminished, was downright vexed. 
‘“‘Dear me!’ said she; ‘‘I did think I 
had kept that from vexing of you. To 
think of the dear child hiding it for nigh 
two years, and then to blurt it out like 
that! Nobody heard him I hope?”’ 

“‘Others heard ; but—’’ 

**Didn’t heed ; the Lord be praised for 
that.’’ 

‘‘Mary,”’ said Lady Bassett, solemnly, 
“T am not equal to another battle with 
Mr. Richard Bassett ; and such a battle! 
Better tell all, and die.”’ 

‘‘Don’t think of it,” said Mary. 
“You’re safe from Richard Bassett 
now. Times are changed since he came 
spying to my gate. His own boy is gone. 
You have got two. He’ll lie still if you 


do. But if you tell your tale, he must 
hear on’t, and he’ll tell his. For God’s 
sake, my lady, keep close. It is the 


curse of women that they can’t just hold 
their tongues, and see how things turn. 
And is this a time to spill good ligq- 
uor? Look at Sir Charles! why, he is 
another man; he have got flesh on his 
bones now, and color into his cheeks, and 
‘twas you and | made aman of him. It 
is my belief you’d never have had this 
other little angel but for us having sense 
and courage to see what must be done. 
Knock down our own work, and send him 
wild again, and give that Richard Bassett 
a handle? You’ll never be so mad.”’ 

Lady Bassett replied. The other an- 
swered; and so powerfully that Lady 
Bassett yielded, and went home sick at 
heart, but helpless, and in a sea of doubt. 

Mr. Angelo did not call. Sir Charles 
asked Lady Bassett if he had called on 
her. 

She said “ No.”’ 

‘That is odd,’’ said Sir ‘Charles. 
‘Perhaps he thinks we ought to wel- 
come him home. Write and ask him 
to dinner.”’ 


‘Yes, dear. Or you can write.’’ 


A THRRIBLE 


‘¢Very well, I will. No, I will call.” 

Sir Charles called, and welcomed him 
home, and asked him to dinner. Angelo 
received him rather stiffly at first, but 
accepted his invitation. 

He came, looking a good deal older and 
graver, but almost as handsome as ever ; 
only somewhat changed in mind. He 
had become a zealous clergyman, and his 
soul appeared to be in his work. He was 
distant and very respectful to Lady Bas- 
sett; I might say obsequious. Seemed 
almost afraid of her at first. 

That wore off in a few months; but he 
was never quite so much at his ease with 
her as he had been before he left some 
years ago. 


And so did time roll on. 

Every morning and every night Lady 
Bassett used to look wistfully at Sir 
Charles, and say 

‘* Are you happy, dear? 
you are happy?’ 

And he used always to say, and with 
truth, that he was the happiest man in 
England, thanks to her. 

Then she used to relax the wild and 
wistful look with which she asked the 
question, and give a sort of sigh, half 
content, half resignation. 

In due course another fine boy came, 
and filled the royal office of baby in his 
turn. 

But my story does not follow him. 


Are you sure 


Reginald was over ten years old, and 
Compton nearly six. They were as dif- 
ferent in character as complexion—both 
remarkable boys. 

Reginald, Sir Charles’s favorite, was a 
wonderful boy for riding, running, talk- 
ing; and had a downright genius for 
melody; he whistled to the admiration 
of the village, and latterly he practiced 
the fiddle in woods and under hedges, 
being aided and abetted therein by a 
gypsy boy whom he loved, and who, in- 
deed, provided the instrument. 

He rode with Sir Charles, and rather 
liked him; his brother he never noticed, 
except to tease him. Lady Bassett he 


TEMPTATION. 155 
admired, and almost loved her while she 
was in the act of playing him undeniable 
melodies. But he liked his nurse Mey- 
rick better, on the whole; she flattered 
him more, and was more uniformly sub- 
servient. 

With these two exceptions he despised 
the whole race of women, and affected 
male society only, especially of grooms, 
stable-boys, and gypsies; these last wel- 
comed him to their tents, and almost 
prostrated themselves before him, so 
dazzled were they by his beauty and 
his color. It is believed they suspect- 
ed him of having gypsy blood in his 
veins. They let him into their tents, 
and even into some of their secrets, and 
he promised them they should have it all 
their own way aS soon as he -was Sir 
Reginald ; he had outgrown his original 
theory that he was to be Sir Charles on 
his father’s death. 

He hated in-doors ; when fixed by com- 
mand to a book, would beg hard to be 
allowed to take it into the sun; and at 
night would open his window and poke 
his black head out to wash in the moon- 
shine, as he said. 

He despised ladies and gentlemen, said 
they were all affected fools, and gave imi- 
tations of all his father’s guests to prove 
it; and so keen was this child of nature’s 
eye for affectation that very often his 
disapproving parents were obliged to 
confess the imp had seen with his fresh 
eye defects custom had made them over- 
look, or the solid good qualities that lay 
beneath had overbalanced. 

Now all this may appear amusing and 
eccentric, and so on, to strangers; but 
after the first hundred laughs or so with 
which paternal indulgence dismisses the 
faults of childhood, Sir Charles became 
very grave. 

The boy was his darling and his pride. 
He was ambitious for him. He earnestly 
desired to solve for him a problem which 
is aS impossible as squaring the circle, 
viz., how to transmit our experience to 
our children. The years and the health 
he had wasted before he knew Bella 
Bruce, these he resolved his successor 
should not waste. He looked higher for 


156 WORKS 
this beautiful boy than for himself. He 
had fully resolved to be member for the 
county one day; but he did not care about 
it for himself; it was only to pave the 
way for his successor; that Sir Reginald, 
after a long career in the Commons, 
might find his way into the House of 
Peers, and so obtain dignity in exchange 
for antiquity ; for, to tell the truth, the 
ancestors of four-fifths of the British 
House of Peers had been hewers of 
wood and drawers of water at a time 
when these Bassetts had already been 
gentlemen of distinction for centuries. 

All this love and this vicarious ambition 
were now mortified daily. Some fathers 
could do wonders for a brilliant boy, and 
with him; they expect him, and a dull 
boy appears; that is a bitter pill; but 
this was worse. Reginald was a sharp 
boy; he could do anything ; fasten him 
to a book for twenty minutes, he would 
learn as much as most boys in an hour ; 
but there was no keeping him to it, unless 
you strapped him or nailed him, for. he 
had the will of a mule, and the supple- 
ness of an eel to carry out his will. And 
then his tastes—low as his features were 
refined; he was a sort of moral dung- 
fork; picked up all the slang of the stable 
and scattered it in the dining-room and 
drawing-room ; and once or twice he stole 
out of his comfortable room at night, and 
slept ina gypsy’s tent with his arm round 
a gypsy boy, unsullied from his cradle by 
soap. 

At last Sir Charles could no longer re- 
ply to his wife at night as he had done for 
this ten years past. He was obliged to 
confess that there was one cloud upon his 
happiness. ‘‘ Dear Reginald grieves me, 
and makes me dread the future; for if 
the child is father to the man, there is a 
bitter disappointment in store forus. He 
is like no other boy; he is like no human 
creature I ever saw. At his age, and 
long after, I was a fool; I was a fool till 
IT knew you; but surely I was a gentle- 
man. I cannot see myself again-—in my 
first-born.’’ 


OF CHARLES READE. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 


LaDy BaAssETT was paralyzed for a 
minute or two by this speech. At last 
she replied by asking a question—rather 
a curious one. ‘‘Who nursed you, 
Charles ? ”’ 

‘‘What, when I was a baby? How 
can | tell? Yes, by-the-by, it was my 
mother nursed me—so I was told.”’ 

‘* And your mother was a Le Compton. 
This poor boy was nursed by a servant. 
Oh, she has some good qualities, and is 
certainly devoted to us—to this day her 
face brightens at sight of me—but she is 
essentially vulgar ; and do you remember, 
Charles, I wished to. wean him early ; but 
I was overruled, and the poor child drew 
his nature from that woman for nearly 
eighteen months; it is a thing unheard of 
nowadays.”’ : 

«Well, but surely it is from our par- 
ents we draw our nature.”’ 

“No; I think it is from our nurses. 
If Compton or Alec ever turn out like 
Reginald, blame nobody but their nurse, 
and that is Me.” 

Sir Charles smiled faintly at this piece 
of feminine logic, and asked her what he 
should do. 

She said she was quite unable to advise. 
Mr. Rolfe was coming to see them soon ; 
perhaps he might be able to suggest 
something. 

Sir Charles said he would consult him ; 
but he was clear on one thing—the boy 
must be sent from Huntercombe, and so 
separated from all his present acquaint- 
ances. 

Mr. Rolfe came, and the distressed fa- 
ther opened his heart to him in strict 
confidence respecting Reginald. 

Rolfe listened and sympathized, and 
knit his brow, and asked time to consider 
what he had heard, and also to study the 
boy for himself. 

He angled for him next day according- 
ly. A little table was taken out on the 
lawn, and presently Mr. Rolfe issued forth 
in a uniform suit of dark blue flannel and 
a sombrero hat, and set to work writing 
a novel in the sun. 

Reginald in due course descried this 


A THRRIBLE 


figure, and it smacked so of that Bohemia 
to which his own soul belonged that he 
was attracted thereby, but made his ap- 
proaches stealthily, like a little cat. 

Presently a fiddle went off behind a 
tree, so close that the novelist leaped out 
of his seat with an eldrich screech; for he 
had long ago forgotten all about Mr. 
Reginald, and, when he got heated in this 
kind of composition, any sudden sound 
seemed to his tense nerves and boiling 
brain about ten times as loud as it really 
was. 

Having relieved himself with a yell, he 
sat down with the mien of a martyr ex- 
pecting tortures ; but he was most agree- 
ably disappointed; the little monster 
played an English melody, and played it 
in tune. This done, he whistled a quick 
tune, and played a slow second to it in 
perfect harmony ; this done, he whistled 
the second part and played the quick 
treble—a very simple feat, but still in- 
genious for a boy, and new to his hearer. 

‘“‘ Bravo! bravo !’’ cried Rolfe, with all 
his heart, 

Mr. Reginald emerged, radiant with 
vanity. ‘‘ You are like me, Mr. Wri- 
ter,’’ said he; ‘‘ you don’t like to be 
cooped up in-doors.”’ 

““T wish I could play the fiddle like you, 
my fine fellow.’’ 

‘“Ah, you can’t do that all ina min- 
ute ; see the time I have been at it.”’ 

“Ah, to be sure, [ forgot your an- 
tiquity.”’ 

“And it isn’t the time only; it’s giv- 
ing your mind to it, old chap.”’ 

‘What, you don’t give your mind to 
your books, then, as you do to your fid- 
dle, young gentleman ?’’ 

“Not such a flat. Why, lookee here, 
governor, if you go and give your mind 
to a thing you don’t like, it’s always 
time wasted, because some other chap, 
that does like it, will beat you, and 
what’s the use working for to be beat ?”’ 

““For’ is redundant,’ objected Roife. 

“But if you stick hard to the things 
you like, you do ’em downright well. 
‘But old people are such fools, they always 
drive you the wrong way. They make 
the gals play music six hours a day, and 


TEMPTATION. 15% 
you might as well set the hen bullfinches 
to pipe. Look at the gals as come here, 
how they rattle up and down the piano, 
and can’t make it sing a morsel. Why, 
they couldn’t rattle like that, if they’d 
music in their skins, d—n ’em; and they 
drive me to those stupid books, because 
I’m all for music and moonshine. Can 
you keep a secret ? ”’ 

«* As the tomb.’’ 

‘* Well, then, I can do plenty of things 
well, besides fiddling; I can set a wire 
with any poacher in the parish. I have 
caught plenty of our old man’s hares in 
my time; and it takes a workman to set 
a wire as it should be. Show me a wire, 
and [’ll tell you whether it was Hudson, 
or Whitbeck, or Squinting Jack, or who 
it was that set it. I know all their work 
that walks by moonlight hereabouts.’’ 

‘‘ This is criticism ; a science ; I prefer 
art; play me another tune, my bold Bo- 
hemian.”’ 

‘Ah, [thought I should catch ye with 
my fiddle. You’re not such a muff as the 
others, old ’un, not by a long chalk. 
Hang me if I won’t give ye ‘Ireland’s 
music,’ and I’ve sworn never to waste 
that on a fool.’’ 

He played the old Irish air so simply 
and tunably that Rolfe leaned back in 
his chair, with half closed eyes, in soft 
voluptuous ecstasy. 

The youngster watched him with his 
coal-black eye. 

““Y like you,” said he, ‘‘better than I 
thought I should, a precious sight.”’ 

‘‘ Highly flattered.”’ 

‘‘Come with me, and hear my nurse 
sing it.”’ 

‘“ What, and leave my novel ?”’ 

‘Oh, bother your novel.”’ 

‘And so I will. That will be tit for 
tat; it has bothered me. Lead on, Bo- 
hemian bold.’’ 

The boy took him, over hedge and 
ditch, the short-cut to Meyrick’s farm ; 
and caught Mrs. Meyrick, and said she 
must sing ‘‘ Ireland’s music’’ to Rolfe 
the writer. 

Mrs. Meyrick apologized for her dress, 
and affected shyness about singing: Mr. 
Reginald stared at first, then let her 


158 


know that, if she was going to be af- 
fected like the girls that came to the Hall, 
he should hate her, as he did them, and 
this he confirmed with a naughty word. 

Thus threatened, she came to book, and 
sang Ireland’s melody in a low, rich, so- 
norous voice ; Reginald played a second ; 
the harmony was so perfect and strong 
that certain glass candelabra on the 
mantel-piece rang loudly, and the drops 
vibrated. Then he made her sing the 
second, and he took the treble with his 
violin; and he wound up by throwing in 
a third part himself, a sort of counter- 
tenor, his own voice being much higher 
than the woman’s. 

The tears stood in Rolfe’s’ eyes. 
‘* Well,’’ said he, ‘‘ you have got the soul 
of music, you two. I could listen to you 
‘From morn till noon, from noon till dewy 
eve.’ ”’ 

As they returned to Huntercombe, this 
mercurial youth went off at a tangent, 
and Rolfe saw him no more. 

He wrote in peace, and walked about 
between the heats. 

Just before dinner-time the screams of 
women were heard hard by, and the 
writer hurried to the place in time to see 
Mr. Bassett hanging by the shoulder 
from the branch of a tree, about twenty 
feet from the ground. 

Rolfe hallooed, as he ran, to the women, 
to fetch blankets to catch him, and got 
under the tree, determined to try and 
catch him in his arms, if necessary ; but 
he encouraged the boy to hold on. 

‘‘ All right, governor,’’ said the boy, in 
a@ quavering voice. 

It was very near the kitchen; maids 
and men poured out with blankets ; eight 
people held one, under Rolfe’s direction, 
and down came Mr. Bassett in a semi- 
circle, and bounded up again off the 
blanket, like an India-rubber ball. 

His quick mind recovered courage the 
moment he touched wool. 

“Crikey ! that’s jolly,’”’ said he; ‘ give 
me another toss or two.”’ 

“‘Oh no! no!” said a good-natured 
maid. ‘‘Take an’ put him to bed right 
off, poor dear.”’ 

‘‘Hold your tongue, ye bitch,’’ said 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


young hopeful; ‘‘if ye don’t toss me, 
I’ll turn ye all off, as soon as ever the 
old un kicks the bucket.”’ | 

Thus menaced, they thought it prudent 
to toss him; but, at the third toss, he 
yelled out, “Oh! oh! oh! Pm all wet; 
it’s blood! I’m dead! ”’ 

Then they examined, and found his arm 
was severely lacerated by an old nail that 
had been driven into the tree, and it had 
torn the flesh in his fall: he was covered 
with, blood, the sight of which quenched 
his manly spirit, and he began to howl. 

‘Old linen rag, warm water, and a 
bottle of champagne,’’ shouted Rolfe: 
the servants flew. 

Rolfe dressed and bandaged the wound 
for him, and then he felt faint: the cham- 
pagne soon set that right; and then he 
wanted to get drunk, alleging, as a rea- 
son, that he had not been drunk for this 
two months. 

Sir Charles was told of the accident, 
and was distressed by it, and also by the 
cause. | 

‘‘ Rolfe,’’ said he, sorrowfully, ‘‘ there 
isa ring-dove’s nest on that tree: she and 
hers have built there in peace and safety 
for a hundred years, and cooed about the 
place. My unhappy boy was climbing 
the tree to take the young, after solemnly 
promising me he never would: that is the 
bitter truth. What shall I do with the 
young barbarian ?”’ 

He sighed, and Lady Bassett echoed 
the sigh. 

Said Rolfe, ‘‘The young barbarian, as 
you call him, has disarmed me: he plays 
the fiddle like a civilized angel.’’ 

‘¢Oh, Mr. Rolfe! ”’ 

“What, you his mother, and not found 
that out yet? Oh yes, he has a heaven- 
born genius for music.”’ 

Rolfe then related the musical feats of 
the urchin. 

Sir Charles begged to observe that this 
talent would go a.very little way toward 
fitting him to succeed his father and keep 
up the credit of an ancient family. 

‘Dear Charles, Mr. Rolfe knows that: 
but it is like him to make the best of 
things, to encourage us. But what do 
you think of him, on the whole, Mr. 


A TERRIBLE 


Rolfe? has Sir Charles more to hope or 
to fear ? ’’ 

‘¢Give me another day or two to study 
him,’’ said Rolfe. | 

That night there was a loud alarm. 
Mr. Bassett was running about the ve- 
randa in his night-dress. 

They caught him and got him to bed, 
and Rolfe saidit was fever; and, with the 
assistance of Sir Charles and a footman, 
laid him between two towels steeped in 
tepid water, then drew blankets tight 
over him, and, in short, packed him. 

Ah !?? said hex complacently ;7 “<1 
say, give me a drink of moonshine, old 
chap.”’ 

““T’ll give youa bucketful,’’ said Rolfe ; 
then, with the servant’s help, took his 
little bed and put it close to the window ; 
the moonlight streamed in on the boy’s 
face, his great black eyes glittered in it. 
He was diabolically beautiful. ‘‘ Kiss 
me, moonshine,’’ said he; ‘‘ I like to wash 
in you.”’ 

Next day he was, apparently, quite 
well, and certainly ripe for fresh mis- 
chief. Rolfe studied him, and, the even- 
ing before he went, gave Sir Charles and 
Lady Bassett his opinion, but not with 
his usual alacrity; a weight seemed to 
hang on him, and, more than once, his 
voice trembled. 

‘‘] shall tell you,’’ said he, ‘“‘ what I 
see—what I foresee—and then, with 
great diffidence, what I advise. 

““T see—what naturalists call a rever- 
sion in race, a boy who resembles in color 
and features neither of his parents, and, 
indeed, bears little resemblance to any of 
the races that have inhabited Kngland 
since history was written. He suggests 
rather some Oriental type.”’ 

Sir Charles turned round in his chair, 
with a sigh, and said, ‘‘ We are to have a 
romance, it seems.”’ 

Lady Bassett stared with all her eyes, 
and began to change color. 

The theorist continued, with perfect 
composure, ‘‘I don’t undertake to ac- 
count for it with any precision. How 
can 1? Perhaps there is Moorish blood 
in your family, and here it has revived ; 
you look incredulous, but there are plenty 


TEMPTATION. 159 
of examples, ay, and stronger than this: 
every child that is born resembles some 
progenitor; how then do you account for 
Julia Pastrana, a young lady who dined 
with me last week, and sang me ‘ Ah 
perdona,’ rather feebly, in the evening? 
Bust and figure like any other lady, hand 
exquisite, arms neatly turned, but with 
long, silky hair from the elbow to the 
wrist. Face, ugh! forehead made of 
black leather, eyes all pupil, nose an ex- 
cerescence, chin pure monkey, face all 
covered with hair; briefly, a type extinct 
ten thousand years before Adam, yet it 
could revive at this time of day. Com- 
pared with La Pastrana, and many much 
weaker examples of antiquity revived, 
that I have seen, your Mauritanian son 
is no great marvel, after all.’’ 

‘This is a lettle too far-fetched,’’ said 
Sir Charles, satirically ; ‘“‘ Bella’s father 
was a very dark man, and it is a tradi- 
tion in our family that all the Bassetts 
were as black-as ink till they married 
with you Rolfes, in the year 1684.”’ 

a Oho 771 said.) Rolfe, y< is 40 esos 
how discussion brings out things.”’ 

‘*And then,’’ said Lady Bassett, 
‘“‘Charles dear, tell Mr. Ralfe what J 
think.’’ 

“ Ay, do,’’ said Rolfe; “ that will bea 
new form of circumlocution.”’ 

Sir Charles complied, with a smile. 
‘‘Lady Bassett’s theory is, that chil- 
dren derive their nature quite as much 
from their wet-nurses as from their par- 
ents, and she thinks the faults we de- 
plore in Reginald are to be traced to 
his nurse; by-the-by, she is a dark 
woman too.”’ 

‘‘Well,’? said Rolfe, ‘‘there’s a good 
deal of truth in that, as far as regards 
the disposition. But I never heard color 
so accounted for; yet why not? It has 
been proved that the very bones of young 
animals can be colored pink, by feeding 
them on milk so colored.’’ 

“There !’’ said Lady Bassett. 

‘But no nurse could give your son a 
color which is not her own. I have seen 
the woman; she is only a dark English- 
woman. Herarms were embrowned by 
exposure, but her forehead was_ not 


See 


160 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 
brown. Mr. Reginald is quite another | viseme. What advice can you build on 
thing. The skin of his body, the white | these cobwebs of your busy brain ?”’ 


of his eye, the pupil, all look like a re- 
version to some Oriental type; and, 
mark the coincidence, he has mental 
peculiarities that point toward the 
East.’’ 

Sir Charles lost patience. ‘‘On the 
contrary,’’ Said he, ‘“‘he talks and feels 
just like an English snob, and makes me 
miserable.’’ | 

‘Oh, as to that, he has picked up vul- 
gar phrases at that farm, and in your 
stables; but he never picked up his musi- 
cal genius in stables and farms, far less 
his poetry.’ 

‘“What poetry ?’’ 

‘What poetry? Why, did not you 
hear him? Was it not poetical of a 
wounded, fevered boy to beg to be laid 
by the window, and to say ‘Let me 
drink the moonshine?’ ‘Take down your 
Homer, and read a thousand lines hap- 
hazard, and see whether you stumble over 
a thought more poetical than that. But 
criticism does not exist: whatever the 
dead said was good ; whatever the living 
say is little; as if the dead were a race 
apart, and had never been the living, and 
the living would never be the dead.” 

Heaven knows where he was running 
to now, but Sir Charles stopped him by 
conceding that point. ‘‘ Well you are 
right: poor child, it was poetical,’’? and 
the father’s pride predominated, for a 
moment, over every other sentiment. 

«Yes; but where did it come from? 
That looks to me a typical idea; 1 mean 
an idea derived, not from his luxurious 
parents, dwellers in curtained mansions, 
but from some out-door and remote an- 
cestor; perhaps from the Oriental tribe 
that first colonized Britain; they wor- 
shiped the sun and the moon, no doubt ; 
or perhaps, after all, it only came from 
some wandering tribe that passed their 
lives between the two lights of heaven, 
and never set foot in a human dvwell- 
mes, 

‘‘This,’’ said Sir Charles, ‘‘is a flatter- 
ing speculation, but so wild and romantic 
that I fear it will lead us to no practical 
result. I thought you undertook to ad- 


«‘Kixcuse me, my practical friend,” 
said Rolfe. ‘‘I opened my discourse in 
three heads. What I see—what I fore- 
see—and what, with diffidence, I advise. 
Pray don’t disturb my methodus, or I am 
done for ; never disturb an artist’s form. 
I have told you what I see. What I 
foresee is this: you will have to cut olf 
the entail with Reginald’s consent, when 
he is of age, and make the Saxon boy 
Compton your successor. Cutting off en- 
tails runs in families, like everything 
else; your grandfather did it, and so 
will you. You should put by a few thou- 
sands every year, that you may be able 
to do this without injustice either to your 
Oriental or your Saxon son.”’ 

‘Never !’’? shouted Sir Charles: then, 
in a broken voice, ‘‘ He is my first-born, 
and my idol; his coming into the world 
rescued me out of a morbid condition : he 
healed my one great grief. Bar the en- 
tail, and put his younger brother in his 
place—never !”’ 

Mr. Rolfe bowed his head politely, and 
left the subject, which, indeed, could be 
carried no farther without serious offense. 

‘¢And now for my advice. The ques- 
tion is, how to educate this strange boy. 
One thing is clear; it is no use trying 
the humdrum plan any longer; it has 
been tried, and failed. I should adapt 
his education to his nature. Education 
is made as stiff and unyielding as a 
board; but it need not be. I should 
abolish that spectacled tutor of yours 
at once, and get a tutor, young, enter- 
prising, manly, and supple, who would 
obey orders; and the order should be to 
observe the boy’s nature, and teach ac- 
cordingly. Why need men teach in a 
chair, and boys learn in a chair? The 
Athenians studied not in chairs. The Peri- 
patetics, as their name imports, hunted 
knowledge afoot; those who sought 
truth in the groves of Academus were 
not seated at that work. Then let the 
tutor walk with him, and talk with him 
by sunlight and moonlight, relating old 
history, and commenting on each new 
thing that is done, or word spoken, and 


Sey 


- guages, but living facts. 


A TERRIBLE TEMPTATION. 161 


improve every occasion. Why, I myself 
would give a guinea a day to walk with 
William White about the kindly aspects 
and wooded slopes of Selborne, or with 
Karr about his garden. Cut Latin and 
Greek clean out of the scheme. They 
are mere cancers to those who can never 
excel in them. Teach him not dead lan- 
Have him in 
your justice-room for half an hour a day, 
and give him your own comments on what 
he has heard there. Let his tutor take 
him to all Quarter Sessions and Assizes, 
and stick to him like diaculum, especially 
out-of-doors; order him never to be ad- 
mitted to the stable-yard ; dismiss every 
biped there that lets him come. Don’t 
let him visit his nurse so often, and never 
without his tutor; it was she who taught 
him to look forward to your decease ; 
that is just like these common women. 
Such a tutor as I have described will de- 
serve £500 a year. Give it him; and dis- 
miss him if he plays humdrum and doesn’t 
earn it. Dismiss half a dozen, if neces- 
sary, till you get a fellow with a grain 
or two of genius for tuition. When the 
boy is seventeen, what with his Oriental 
precocity, and this system of education, 
he will know the world as well as a Saxon 
boy of twenty-one, and that is not saying 
much. Then,if his nature is still as wild, 
get hima large tract in Australia; cattle 
to breed, kangaroos to shoot, swift horses 
to thread the bush and gallop mighty 
tracts; he will not shirk business, if it 
avoids the repulsive form of sitting down 
in-doors, and offers itself in combination 
with riding, hunting, galloping, cracking 
of rifles, and of colonial whips as loud as 
rifles, and drinking sunshine and moon- 
Shine in that mellow clime, beneath the 
Southern Cross and the spangled firma- 
ment of stars unknown to us.”’ 

His own eyes sparkled like hot coals at 
this Bohemian picture. 

Then he sighed and returned to civili- 
zation. ‘ But,’’ said he, ‘“‘be ready with 
eighty thousand pounds for him, that he 
may enjoy his own way and join you in 
barring the entail. I forgot, I must say 
no more on that subject; I see it is as 
offensive—as it is inevitable. Cassandra 


has spoken wisely, and, I see, in vain. 
God bless you both—good-night.”’ 

And he rolled out of the room with a 
certain clumsy importance. 

Sir Charles treated all this advice with 
a polite forbearance while he was in the 
room, but on his departure delivered a 
sage reflection. 

‘‘Strange,’’ said he, ‘‘ that a man so 
valuable in any great emergency should 
be so extravagant and eccentric in the 
ordinary affairs of life. I might as well 
drive to Bellevue House and consult the 
first gentleman I met there.’’ 

Lady Bassett did not reply immediately, 
and Sir Charles observed that her face 
was very red and her hands trembled. 

““Why, Bella,’’ said he, “has all that 
rhodomontade upset you? ”’ 

Lady Bassett looked frightened at his 
noticing her agitation, and said that Mr. 
Rolfe always overpowered her. “He is 
so large, and so confident, and throws 
such new light on things.”’ 

“New light! Wild eccentricity always 
does that; but it is the light of Jack-o’- 
lantern. On a great question, so near 
my heart as this, give me the steady 
light of common sense, not the wayward 
coruscations of a fiery imagination. Bella 
dear, I shall send the boy to a good 
school, and so cut off at one blow all 
the low associations that have caused 
the mischief.’’ 

‘“You know what is best, dear,’’ said 
Lady Bassett ; “‘ you are wiser than any 
of-us,’4 

In the morning she got hold of Mr. 
Rolfe, and asked him if he could put her 
in the way of getting more than three per 
cent for her money without risk. 

‘“Only one,’ said Rolfe. <‘‘ London 
freeholds in rising situations let to sub- 
stantial tenants. Ican get you five per 
cent that way, if you are always ready 
to buy. The thing does not offer every 
day.”’ 

““T have twenty thousand pounds to 
dispose of so,’’ said Lady Bassett. 

“Very well,’’ said Rolfe. ‘Ill look 
out for you, but Oldfield must examine 
titles and do the actual business. The 
best of that investment is, it is always 

& 6 ) REeADE—VOL. VIII. 


162 


improving; no ups and downs. Come,”’ 
thought he, ‘‘ Cassandra has not spoken 
quite in vain.”’ 

Sir Charles acted on his judgment, and 
in due course sent Mr. Bassett to a school 
at some distance, kept by a clergyman, 
who had the credit in that county of ex- 
ercising sharp supervision and strict dis- 
cipline. 

Sir Charles made no secret of the boy’s 
eccentricities. Mr. Beecher said he had 
one or two steady boys who assisted him 
in such cases. 

Sir Charles thought that a very good 
idea; it was like putting a wild colt into 
the break with a steady horse. 

He missed the boy sadly at first, but 
comforted himself with the conviction 
that he had parted with him for his good: 
that consoled him somewhat. 


The younger children of Sir Charles 
and Lady Bassett were educated entirely 
by their mother, and taught as none but 
a loving lady can teach. 

Compton, with whom we have to do, 
never knew the thorns with which the 
path of letters is apt to be strewn. A 
mistress of the great art of pleasing made 
knowledge from the first a primrose path 
to him. Sparkling all over with intelli- 
gence, she impregnated her boy with it. 
She made herself his favorite companion ; 
she would not keep her distance. She 
stole and coaxed knowledge and goodness 
into his heart and mind with rare and 
loving cunning. 

She taught him English and French 
and Latin on the Hamiltonian plan, and 
stored his young mind with history and 
biography, and read to him, and con- 
versed with him on everything as they 
read it. 

She taught him to speak the truth, and 
to be honorable and just. 

She taught him to be polite, and even 
formal, rather than free-and-easy and 
rude. She taught him to beaman. He 
must not be what brave boys called a 
molly-coddle : like most womanly women, 
she had a veneration for man, and she 
gave him her own high idea of the manly 
character. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


Natural ability, and habitual contact 
with a mind so attractive and so rich, 
gave this intelligent boy many good ideas 
beyond his age. 

When he was six years old, Lady Bas- 
sett made him pass his word of honor 
that he would never go into the stable- 
yard; and even then he was far enough 
advanced to keep his word religiously. 

In return for this she let him taste 
some sweets of liberty, and was not al- 
ways after him. She was profound enough 
to see that without liberty a noble char- 
acter cannot be formed; and she hus- 
banded the curb. 


One day he represented to her that, in 
the meadow next their lawn, were great 
stripes of yellow, which were possibly 
cowslips; of course they might be only 
buttercups, but he hoped better things 
of them; he further reported that there 
was an iron gate between him and this 
paradise: he could get over it if not ob- 
jectionable; but he thought it safest to 
ask her what she thought of the matter ; 
was that iron gate intended to keep little 
boys from the cowslips, because, if so, it 
was a misfortune to which he must resign 
himself. Still, it was a misfortune. All 
this, of course, in the simple language of 
boyhood. 

Then Lady Bassett smiled, and said, 
‘‘Suppose I were to lend you a key of 
that iron gate ?”’ 

«“ Oh,-mamma !”’ 

‘‘T have a great mind to.”’ 

‘Then you will, you will.”’ 

“‘ Does that follow ? ”’ 

‘Yes: whenever you say you think 
you'll do something kind, or you have a 
great mind to do it, you know you always 
do it; and that is one thing I do like you 
for, mamma—you are better than your 
word.”’ 

‘‘ Better than my word ?' Where does 
the child learn these things?’ _ 

‘La, mamma, papa says that often.”’ 

‘Oh; that accounts for it. I like the 
phrase very much. I wish I could think 
I deserved it. At any rate, I will be as 
good asmy word for once ; youshall have 
a key of the gate.’’ 


A TERRIBLE 


The boy clapped his hands with de- 
light. , 

The key was sent for, and, meantime, 
she told him one reason why she had 
trusted him with it was because he had 
been as good as his word about the 
stable. 

The key was brought, and she held it 
up half playfully, and said, ‘‘ There, sir, 
I deliver you this upon conditions: you 
must only use it when the weather is 
quite dry, because the grass in the 
meadow is longer, and will be wet. Do 
you promise ? ”’ 

‘Yes, mamma.”’ 

‘¢ And you must always lock the gate 
when you come back, and bring the key 
to one place—let me see—the drawer in 
the hall table, the one with marble on it ; 
for you know a place for everything is our 
rule. On these conditions, I hereby de- 
liver you this magic key, with the right 
of egress and ingress.”’ 

‘‘EKgress and ingress ? ”’ 

‘‘ Hgress and ingress.’’ 

‘Is that foreign for cowslips, mamma 
—and oxlips ? ”’ 

‘Ha! ha! the child’s head is full of 
cowslips. There is the dictionary ; look 
out Egress, and afterward look out In- 
gress,”’ 

When he had added these two words 
to his little- vocabulary, his mother asked 
him if he would be good enough to tell her 
why he did not care much about all the 
beautiful flowers in the garden, and was 
so excited about cowslips, which appeared 
to her a flower of no great beauty, and 
the smell rather sickly, begging his par- 
don. 

This question posed him dreadfully : he 
looked at her in a sort of comic distress, 
and then sat gravely down all in a heap, 
about a yard off, to think. 

Finally he turned to her with a wry 
face, and said, ‘‘ Why do I, mamma ?”’ 

She smiled deliciously. ‘‘ No, no, sir,’’ 
said she. ‘*How can I get inside your 
little head and tell what is there? There 
must be a reason, I suppose; and you 
know you and I are never satisfied till we 
get at the reason of a thing. But there 
is no hurry, dear. I give you a week to 


TEMPTATION. 163 
find it out. Now run and open the 
gate—stay, are there any cows in that 
field?’’ 

‘‘Sometimes, mamma; but they have 
no horns, you know.” 

‘*Upon your word ?”’ 


‘*Upon my honor. I am not fond of 


them with horns, myself.’’ 


‘Then run away, darling. But you 
must come and hunt me up, and tell me 
how you enjoyed yourself, because that ° 
makes me happy, you know.”’ 

This is mawkish; but it will serve to 
show on what terms the woman and boy 
were. 

On second thoughts, I recall that apol- 
ogy, and defy creation. ‘‘ THE. MAawk- 


ISsH’’ is a branch of literature, a great 


and popular one, and I have neglected it 
savagely. 

Master Compton opened the iron gate, 
and the world was all before him where 
to choose. 

He chose one of those yellow stripes 
that had so attracted him. Horror! it 
was all buttercups, and deil a cowslip. 

Nevertheless, pursuing his researches, 
he found plenty of that delightful flower 
scattered about the meadow in thinner 
patches ; and he gathered a double hand- 
ful and dirtied his knees. 

Returning, thus laden, from his first 
excursion, he was accosted by a fluty 
voice. 

‘Little boy {77 

He looked up, and saw a girl standing 
on the lower bar of a little wooden gate 
painted white, looking over. 

‘¢ Please bring me my ball,”’ said she, 
pathetically. 

Compton looked about, and saw a soft 
ball of many colors lying near. 

He put down his cowslips gravely, and 
brought her the ball. He gave it her 
with a blush, because she was a strange 
girl; and she blushed a little, because he 
did. 

He returned to his cowslips. 

‘‘Little boy !’’ said the voice, ‘‘ please 
bring me my ball again.”’ 

He brought it her, with undisturbed 
politeness. She was giggling ; he laughed 
too, at that. 


164 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


“You did it on purpose that time,”’ 
said he, solemnly. 

‘‘La! you don’t think I’d be so wicked,”’ 
said she. 

Compton shook his head doubtfully, 
and, considering the interview at an end 
turned to go, 
knocked his hat off, and nothing of the 
malefactress was visible but a black eye 
sparkling with fun and mischief, and a 
‘bit of forehead wedged against the angle 
of the wall. 

This being a challenge, Compton said, 
‘““Now you come out after that, and 
stand a shot, like a man.’’ 

The invitation to be masculine did not 
tempt her a bit; the only thing she put 


out was her hand, and that she drew 


in, with a laugh, the moment he threw 
at it. 

At this juncture a ates cried, ** Ru- 
perta! what are you doing there? ’’ 

Ruperta made a rapid signal with her 
hand to Compton, implying that he was 
to run away; and she herself walked de- 
murely toward the person who had called 
her. 

It was three days before Compton saw 
her again, and then she beckoned him 
royally to her. 

‘Little boy,’’ said she, “‘talk to me.”’ 

Compton looked at her a little con- 
founded, and did not reply. 

i eae on this gate, like me, and 
talk,’’ said she. 

He obeyed the first part of this man- 
date, and stood on the lower bar of the 
little gate; so their two figures made a 
V, when they hung back, and a tenpenny 
nail when they came forward and met, 
and this motion they continued through 
the dialogue; and it was a pity the little 
wretches could not keep still, and send 
for my friend the English Titian: for, 
when their heads were in position, it was 
indeed a pretty picture of childish and 
flower-like beauty and contrast; the boy 
fair, blue-eyed, and with exquisite golden 
hair; the girl black-eyed, black-browed, 
and with eyelashes of incredible length 
and beauty, and a cheek brownish, but 
tinted, and so glowing with health and 
vigor that, pricked with a needle, it 


when instantly the ball 


seemed ready to squirt carnation right 
into your eye. 

She dazzled Master Compton so that he 
could do nothing but look at her. 

“Well?” said she, smiling. 

‘‘Well,”? replied he, pretending her 
‘“‘well’’ was not an interrogatory, but a 
concise statement, and that he had dis- 
charged the whole duty of man by ac- 
cording a prompt and cheerful consent. 

‘* You begin,’’ said the lady. 

‘SN0; Vou. s 

‘What for? ’’ 

‘* Because—I think—you are the clever- 
est.”’ 

‘Good little boy! 
Who are you?”’ 

“T am Compton. 
please ? ”’ 

‘| am Ruperta.”’ 

«“T never heard that name before.”’ 

“No more did I. I think they meas- 
ured me for it: you live in the great 
house there, don’t you?”’ 

“Yes, Ruperta.”’ 

“Well, then, I live in the little house. 
It is not very little either. It’s High- 
more. I saw you in church one day; is 
that lady with the hair your mamma ?”’ 

“Yes, Ruperta.”’ 

‘*She is beautiful.”’ 

“‘ Tsn’t she ?”’ 

‘‘ But mine is so good.’’ 

““Mine is very good, too, 
Wonderfully good.”’ 

‘‘T like you, Compton—a little.’ 

‘‘T like you a good deal, Ruperta.”’ 

*‘La, do you? I wonder at that: you 
are like a cherub, and I am such a black 
thing.”’ 

«But that is why I like you. Reginald 
is darker than you, and oh, so beautiful!”’ 

‘* Hum !—he is a very bad boy.’’ 

“No, he is not.”’ 

“Don’t tell stories, child; he is. I 
know all about him. <A wicked, vulgar, 
bad boy.”’ 

‘“‘He is not,’’ cried Compton, almost 
sniveling ; but he altered his mind, and 
fired up. “You are a naughty, story- 
telling girl, to say that.’’ 

*“Bless me/’’ said Ruperta, coloring 
high, and tossing her head haughtily. 


Well, then, I will. 


Who are you, 


Ruperta. 


A TERRIBLE 
“T don’t like you now, Ruperta,”’ said 
Compton, with all the decent calmness of 
a settled conviction. | 

‘‘You don’t!’’ screamed Ruperta. 
«Then go about your business directly, 
and don’t never come here again! Scold- 
ing me/ How dare you ?—oh! oh! oh!’’ 
and the little lady went off slowly, with 
her finger in her eye; and Master Comp- 
ton looked rather rueful, as we all do 
when this charming sex has recourse to 
what may be called ‘‘ liquid reasoning.’’ 
I have known the most solid reasons un- 
able to resist it. 

However, ‘‘mens conscia recti,’’ and, 
above all, the cowslips, enabled Compton 
to resist, and he troubled his head no 
more about her that day. 

But he looked out for her the next day, 
and she did not come; and that rather 
disappointed him. 

The next day was wet, and he did not 
go into the meadow, being on honor not 
to do so. 

The fourth day was lovely, and he spent 
a long time in the meadow, in hopes: he 
saw her for a moment at the gate; but 
she speedily retired. 

He was disappointed. 

However, he collected a good store of 
cowslips, and then came home. 

As he passed the door out popped 
Ruperta from some secret ambush, and 
Bald Well p>” 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 


** WELL,” replied Compton. 

«« Are you better, dear ?”’ 

‘‘1’m very well, thank you,”’ said the 
boy. 

‘‘In your mind, I mean. 
cross last time, you know.”’ 

Compton remembered his mother’s les- 
sons’ about manly behavior, and said, ina 
jaunty way, ‘“‘ Well, I s’pose I was a lit- 
tle cross.”’ 

Now the other cunning little thing had 


You were 


TEMPTATION. 165 
come to apologize, if there was no other 
way to recover her admirer. But, on this 
confession, she said, ‘* Oh, if you are sorry 
for it, L forgive you. You may come and 
talk.” . 

Then Compton came and stood on the 
gate, and they held a long conversation ; 
and, having quarreled last time, parted 
now with rather violent expressions of 
attachment. 

After that they made friends and laid 
their little hearts bare to each other; and 
it soon appeared that Compton had 
learned more, but Ruperta had thought 
more for herself, and was sorely puzzled 
about many things, and of a vastly in- 
quisitive mind. ‘‘Why,’’ said she, ‘‘is 
good things so hard, and bad things so 
nice and easy? It would be much better 
if good things were nice and bad ones 
nasty. That is the way I’d have it, if I 
could make thingss.’’ 

Mr. Compton shook his head and said 
many things were very hard to under- 
stand, and even his mamma sometimes 
could not make out all the things. 

““ Nor mine neither ; I puzzle her dread- 
ful. Ican’t help that; things shouldn’t 
come and puzzle me, and then I shouldn’t 
puzzle her. Shall I tell you my puzzles? 
and perhaps youcan answer them because 
you are a boy. I can’t think why it is 
wicked for me to dig in my little garden 
on a Sunday, and it isn’t wicked for 
Jessie to cook and Sarah to make the 
beds. Can’t think why mamma told 
papa not to be cross, and, when I told 
her not to be cross, she put me in a dark 
cupboard all among the dreadful mice, till 
I screamed so she took me out and kissed 
me and gave me pie. Can’t think why 
papa called Sally ‘Something’ for spill- 
ing the ink over his papers, and when I 
called the gardener the very same for 
robbing my flowers, all their hands and 
eyes went up, and they said I was a 
shocking girl. Can’t think why papa gig- 
gled the next moment, if I was a shock- 
ing girl: it is all puzzle—puzzle—puzzle.”’ 


One day she said, ‘‘Can you tell me 
where all the bad people are buried ? for 
that puzzles me dreadful.’ 


166 WORKS 

Compton was posed at first, but said 
at last he thought they were buried in 
the churchyard, along with the good 
ones. 

““Oh, indeed !”’ said she, with an air of 
pity. ‘‘ Pray, have you ever been in the 
churchyard, and read the writings on the 
stones ? ”’ 

: IN Oe | 

“Then I have. I have read every 
single word ; and there are none but good 
people buried there, not one.’’ She added, 
rather pathetically, “* You should not an- 
swer me without thinking, as if things 
were easy, instead of so hard. Well, one 
comfort, there are not many wicked peo- 
ple hereabouts; they live in towns; so I 
suppose they are buried in the garden, 
poor things, or put in the water with a 
stone.”’ 

Compton had no more plausible theory 
ready, and declined to commit himself 
to Ruperta’s; so that topic fell to the 
ground. 

One day he found her perched as usual, 
but with her bright little face over- 
clouded. 

By this time the intelligent boy was 
fond enough of her to notice her face. 

‘«‘ What’s the matter, Perta ? ’’ 

“ Ruperta. The matter? Puzzled again! 
It is very serious this time.”’ 

‘*Tell me, Ruperta.”’ 

‘s Nogdear.7) 

«« Please.”’ 

The young lady fixed her eyes on him, 
and said, with a pretty solemnity, ‘ Let 
us play at catechism.”’ 

_T don’t know that game.”’ 

‘‘“The governess asks questions, and 
the good little boy answers. That’s cate- 
chism. I’m the governess.’’ ) 

“Then I’m the good little boy.’’ 

«Yes, dear; and so now look me full in 
the face.’’ 

«< There—you’re very pretty, Ruperta.”’ 

“Don’t be giddy ; I’m hideous; so be- 
have, and answer all my questions. Oh, 
I’m so unhappy. Answer me, is young 
people, or old people, goodest ? ”’ 

«You should say best, dear. Good, 
better, best. Why, old people, to be 
sure—much.,”’ 


OF CHARLES READE. 


“So I thought; and that is why I am 
so puzzled. Then your papa and mine 
are much betterer—will that do ?—than 
we are? ”’ 

“Of course they are.”’ 

“There he goes! Such a child for an- 
swering slap bang I never.’’ | 

“Vm notachild. I’m older than you 
are, Ruperta.”’ 

“'That’s a story.”’ 

“Well, then, I’m as old; for Mary 
says we were born the same day—the 
same hour—the same minute.”’ . 

‘‘La! we are twins.”’ 

She paused, however, on this discovery, 
and soon found reason to doubt her hasty 
conclusion. ‘*‘No such thing,’’ said she: 
‘they tell me the bells were ringing for 
you being found, and then | was found— 
to catechism you.”’ 

‘‘'There! then you see 1 am older than 
you, Ruperta.”’ 

‘< Yes, dear,’ said Ruperta, very grave- 
ly ; “‘l?’m younger in my body, but older 
in my head.’’ 

This matter being settled so that neither 
party could complain, since antiquity was 
evenly distributed, the catechizing recom- 
menced. 

‘Do you believe in ‘Let dogs de- 
heat! 2 

““T don’t know.”’ ! 

“What!’’ screamed Ruperta. ‘ Oh, 
you wicked boy! Why, it comes next 
after the Bible.”’ 

«Then I do believe it,’’ said Compton, 
who, to tell the truth, had been merely 
puzzled by the verb, and was not afflicted 
with any doubt that the composition re- 
ferred to was a divine oracle. 

“Good boy!” said Ruperta, patroniz- 
ingly. ‘‘ Well, then, this is what puzzles 
me; your papa and mine don’t believe in 
‘Dogs delight.’ They have been quarrel- 
ing this twelve years and more, and mean 
to go on, in spite of mamma. She 7s 
good. Didn’t you know that your papa 
and mine are great enemies ? ”’ 

‘“No, Ruperta. Oh, what a pity!’ 

“Don’t, Compton, don’t: there, * you 
have made me cry.”’ 

He set himself to console her. 

She consented to be consoled. 


A TERRIBLE 


But she said, with a sigh, ‘‘ What be- 
comes of old people being better than 
young ones, now? Are you and I bears 
and lions? Do we scratch out each 
other’s eyes? It is all puzzle, puzzle, 
puzzle. I wish I was dead! Nurse 
says, when I’m dead I shall under- 
stand it all. “But I don’t know; I 
saw a dead cat once, and she didn’t 
seem to know as much as before; puz- 
zle, puzzle. Compton, do you think 
they are puzzled in heaven?’’ 

ac IN G.7” 

‘*Then the sooner we both go there, the 
better.’’ 

«Yes, but not just now.”’ 

<< Why not ?”’ 

‘Because of the cowslips.”’ 

‘“‘Here’s a boy! What, would you 
rather be among the cowslips than the 
angels? and think of the diamonds and 
pearls that heaven is paved with.’’ 

‘But you mightn’t be there.’’ 

‘What! Am I a wicked girl, then— 
wickeder than you, that is a boy??”’ 

‘Oh no, no, no; but see how big it is 
up there;’’ they cast their eyes up, and, 
taking the blue vault for creation, were 
impressed with its immensity. ‘I know 
where to find you here, but up there you 
might be ever so far off me.”’ 

“Tia! solmight. Well, then, we had 
better keep quiet. 
wiser as we get older. But Compton, I’m 
so sorry your papa and mine are bears 
and lions, Why doesn’t the clergyman 
scold them ?”’ 

‘* Nobody dare scold my papa,”’ said 
Compton, proudly. Then, after reflec- 
tion, ‘‘ Perhaps, when we are older, we 
may persuade them to make friends. I 
think it is very stupid to quarrel; don’t 
you?P”’ | | 

‘* As stupid as an owl.’’ 

“You and I had a quarrel once, Ru- 
perta.”’ 

“Yes, you misbehaved.’’ 

‘*No, no; you were cross.”’ 

“Story! Well, never mind: we did 
quarrel. And you were miserable di- 
_ rectly.’’ 

‘*Not so very,’”’ said Compton, tossing 
his head. 


I suppose we shall get | 


TEMPTATION. 167 

‘‘T was, then,”’ said Ruperta, with un- 
guarded candor. 

**So was I.”’ 

‘Good boy! Kiss me, dear.’ 

*«There—and there—and there—and—”’ 

“That will do. I want to talk, Comp- 
ton.’’ 

«Yes, dear.”’ 

<“T’m not very sure, but I rather think 
I’m in love with you—a little, little bit, 
you know.”’ 

‘‘And I’m sure I’m in love with you, 


Ruperta.”’ 
‘‘Over head an’ ears? ”’ 
“«< Yes.”’ 
“Then I love you to distraction. 


Bother the gate! If it wasn’t for that, 
I could run in the meadow with you; and 
marry you perhaps, and so gather cow- 
slips together for ever and ever.”’ 

‘‘ Let us open it.”’ 

¢¢ You ‘cau t.7 

‘« Let us try.”’ 

“Thave. It won’t be opened.’’ 

“Let me try. Some gates want to be 
lifted up a little, and then they will open. 
There, I told you so.”’ 

The gate came open. 

Ruperta uttered an exclamation of de- 
light, and then drew back. 

‘¢T’m afraid, Compton,’’ 
‘papa would be angry.”’ 

She wanted Compton to tempt her; 
but that young gentleman, having a 
strong sense of filial duty, omitted so 
to do. 

When she saw he would’ not persuade 
her, she dispensed. ‘‘Come along,’’ said 
she, ‘‘if it is only for five minutes.”’ 

She took his hand, and away they 
scampered. He showed her the cowslips, 
the violets, and all the treasures of the 
meadow ; but it was all hurry, and skurry, 
and excitement; no time to look at any- 
thing above half a minute, for fear of 
being found out: and so, at last, back to 
the gate, beaming with stolen pleasure, 
glowing and sparkling with heat and ex- 
citement. 

The cunning thing made him replace 
the gate, and then, after saying she must 
go for about an hour, marched demurely 


said she, 


back to the house. 


168 WORKS OF 


After one or two of these hasty trips, 
impunity gave her a sense of security, 
and, the weather getting warm, she used 
to sit in the meadow with her beau and 
weave wreaths of cowslips, and place 
them in her black hair, and for Comp- 
ton she made coronets of bluebells, and 
adorned his golden head. 

And sometimes, for a little while, she 
would nestle to him, and lean her head, 
with all the feminine grace of a mature 
woman, on his shoulder. 

Said she, ‘‘ A boy’s shoulder does very 
nice for a girl to put her nose on.’’ 

‘One day the aspiring girl asked him 
what was that forest. 

“That is Bassett’s wood.’’ 

JT will go there with you some day, 
when papa is out.”’ 

‘I’m afraid that is too far for you,”’ 
said Compton. 

‘‘Nothing is too far for me,’’ replied 
the ardent girl. ‘‘ Why, how far is it ?”’ 

‘“ More than half a mile.’’. 

‘Ts it very big ?”’ 

«© Tmmense.’’ 

‘‘ Belong to the queen ? ”’ 

‘No, to papa.”’ 

SEO Ti Be 

And here my reader may well ask what 
was Lady Bassett about, or did Compton, 
with all his excellent teaching, conceal all 
this from his mother and his friend. 

On the contrary, he went open-mouthed 
to her and told her he had seen such a 
pretty little girl, and gave her a brief 
account of their conversation. 

Lady Bassett was startled at first, and 
greatly perplexed. She told him he must 
on no account go to her; if he spoke to 
her, it must be on papa’s ground. She 
even made him pledge his honor to that. 

More than that she did not like to say. 
She thought it unnecessary and undesir- 
able to transmit to another generation 
the unhappy feud by which she had suf- 
fered so much, and was even then suffer- 
ing. Moreover, she was as much afraid 
of Bichard Bassett as ever. If he chose 
to tell his girl not to speak to Compton, 
he might. She was resolved not to go 


out of her way to affront him, through. 


his daughter. Besides, that might wound 


CHARLES READE. 


Mrs. Bassett, if it got round to her ears ; 
and, although she had never spoken to 
Mrs. Bassett, yet their eyes had met in 
church, and always with a pacific expres- 
sion. Indeed, Lady Bassett felt sure she 
had read in that meek woman’s face a re- 
eret that they were not friends, and could 
not be friends, because of their husbands. 
Lady Bassett, then, for these reasons, 
would not forbid Compton to be kind to 
Ruperta in moderation. 

Whether she would have remained as 
neutral had she known how far these 
young things were going, is quite another 
matter; but Compton’s narratives to her 
were, naturally enough, very tame com- 
pared with the reality, and she never 
dreamed that two seven-year-olds could 
form an attachment so warm as these 
little plagues were doing. | 

And, to conclude, about the time when 
Mr. Compton first opened the gate for 
his inamorata, Lady Bassett’s mind was 
diverted, in some degree, even from her 
beloved boy Compton, by a new trouble, 
and a host of passions it excited in her 
own heart. 

A thunder-clap fell on Sir Charles Bas- 
sett, in the form of a letter from Regi- 
nald’s tutor, informing him that Regi- 
nald and another lad had been caught 
wiring hares in a wood at some distance 
and were now in custody. ; 

Sir Charles mounted his horse and 
rode to the place, leaving Lady Bassett 
a prey to great anxiety and bitter re- 
morse. 

Sir Charles came back in two days, 
with the galling news that his son and 
heir was in prison for a month, all his ex- 
ertions having only prevailed to get the 
case Summarily dealt with. 

’ Reginald’s companion, a young gypsy, 
aged seventeen, had got three months, it 
being assumed that he was the tempter: 
the reverse was the case, though. 

When Sir Charles told Lady Bassett 
all this, with a face of agony, and a 
broken voice, her heart almost burst: 
she threw every other consideration to 
the winds. 

‘“‘Charles,’’ she cried, ‘‘ I can’t bear it: 
I can’t see your heart wrung any more, 


A THRRIBLE 


and your affections blighted. Tear that 
young viper out of your breast: don’t 
go on wasting your heart’s blood on a 
stranger ; HE IS NOT YOUR SON.” 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 


At this monstrous declaration, from 
the very lips of the man’s wife, there was 
a dead silence, Sir Charles being struck 
dumb, and Lady Bassett herself terrified 
at the sound of the words she had ut- 
tered. ’ 

After a terrible pause, Sir Charles 
fixed his eyes on her, with an awful 
look, and said, very slowly, ‘‘ Will—you 
—have — the — goodness —to—say that 
again? but first think what you are say- 
inst 

This made Lady Bassett shake in every 
limb; indeed the very flesh of her body 
quivered. Yet she persisted, but in a 
tone that of itself showed how fast her 
courage was oozing. She faltered out, 
almost inaudibly, “‘I say you must 
waste no more love on him—he is not 
your son.” 

Sir Charles looked at her to see if she 
was in her senses: it was not the first 
time he had suspected her of being de- 
ranged on this one subject. But no: 
she was pale as death, she was cringing, 
wincing, quivering, and her eyes roving 
to and fro; a picture not of frenzy, but 
of guilt unhardened. 

He began to tremble in his turn, and 
was so horror-stricken and agitated that 
he could hardly speak. ‘“‘Am I dream- 
ing ?’”’ he gasped. 

Lady Bassett saw the storm she had 
raised, and would have given the world 
to recall her words. 

‘‘Whose is he, then?’ asked Sir 
Charles, in a voice scarcely human. 

““T don’t know,” said Lady Bassett 
doggedly. 

‘Then how dare you say that-he isn’t 
mine ? ”’ 


TEMPTATION. 169 

** Kill me, Charles,’’ cried she, passion- 
ately; ‘but don’t look at me so and speak 
to meso. Why I say he is not yours, is 
he like you either in face or mind ? ”’ 

‘¢ And he is like—whom ?”’ 

Lady Bassett had lost all her courage 
by this time: she whimpered out, ‘‘ Like 
nobody except the gypsies,”’ 

‘* Bella, this is a subject which will part 
you and me for life unless we can agree 
upon it—’’ 

No reply, in words, from Lady Bas- 


sett. 


“So please let us understand each 
other. Your son is not.my son. Is 
that what you look me in the face and 
tell me?’’ 

“Charles, I never said that. How 
could he be my son, and not be yours? ”’ 

And she raised her eyes, and looked 
him full in the face: nor fear nor cringing 
now : the woman was majestic. 

Sir Charles was a little alarmed in his 
turn ; for his wife’s soft eyes flamed battle 
for the first time in her life. 

‘“‘“Now you talk sense,’’ said he; ‘‘if 
he is yours, he is mine; and, as he is 
certainly yours, this is a very foolish 
conversation, which must not be renewed, 
otherwise—’’ 

‘‘T shall be insulted by my own hus- 
band ?”’ 

““T think it very probable. And, as I 
do not choose you to be insulted, nor to 
think yourself insulted, | forbid you ever 
to recur to this subject.”’ 

*‘T will obey, Charles; but let me say 
one word first. When I was alone in 
London, and hardly sensible, might not 
this child have been imposed upon me 
and you? I’m sure he was.”’ 

‘“By whom ?”’ 

‘“‘How can I tell? I was alone—that 
woman in the house had a bad face—the 
gypsies do these things, I’ve heard.”’ 

“The gypsies! And why not the 
fairies?’ said Sir Charles, contemptu- 
ously. ‘‘Is that all you- have to suggest 
—before we close the subject forever ? ”’ 

“Yes,’’ said Lady Bassett sorrowfully. 
«“T see you take me for a mad-woman ; 
but time will show. Oh that I could 
persuade you to detach your affections 


170 


from that boy—he will break your heart 
else—and rest them on the children that 
resemble us in mind and features.’’ 
‘“‘These partialities are allowed to 
mothers; but a father must be just. 
Reginald is my first-born; he came to 


me from Heaven at a time when I was 


under a bitter trial, and from the day he 
was born till this day I have been a 
happy man. It is not often a father 
owes so much to a son as I do to my 
darling boy. He is dear to my heart in 
spite of his faults; and now I pity him, 
as well as love him, since it seems he has 
only one parent, poor little fellow !’’ 

Lady Bassett opened her mouth to 
reply, but could not. She raised her 
hands in mute despair, then quietly 
covered her face with them, and soon 
the tears trickled through her white 
fingers. 

Sir Charles looked at her, and was 
touched at her silent grief. 

‘““My darling wife,’’ said he, ‘‘I think 
this is the only thing you and I cannot 
agree upon. Why not be wise as well as 
loving, and avoid it.’’ 

*““T will never seek it again,’’ sobbed 
Lady Bassett. ‘“ But oh,’’ she cried, 
with sudden wildness, ‘‘ something tells 
me it will meet me, and follow me, and 
rob me of my husband. Well, when that 
day comes, I shall know how to die.”’ 

And with this she burst away from 
him, like some creature who has been 
stung past endurance. 

Sir Charles often meditated on this 
strange scene: turn it how he could, he 
came back to the same conclusion, that 
she must have an hallucination on this 
subject. He said to himself, “If Bella 
really believed the boy was a changeling, 
she would act upon her conviction, she 
would urge me to take some steps to 
recover our true child, whom the gypsies 
or the fairies have taken, and given us 
poor dear Reginald instead.”’ 

But still the conversation, and her 
strange looks of terror, lay dormant in 
his mind: both were too remarkable to 
be ever forgotten. Such things lie like 
certain seeds, awaiting only fresh acci- 
dents to spring into life. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. | 


The month rolled away, and the day 
came for Reginald’s liberation. A dog- 
cart was sent for him, and the heir of the 
Bassetts emerged from a county jail, and 
uttered a whoop of delight; he insisted 
on driving, and went home at a rattling 
pace. 

He was in high spirits till he got in 
sight of Huntercombe Hall; and then it 
suddenly occurred to his mercurial mind 
that he should probably not be received 
with an ovation, petty larceny being a 
novelty in that ancient house whose 
representative he was. 

When he did get there he found the 
whole family in such a state of commo- 
tion that his return was hardly noticed 
at all. | 


Master Compton’s dinner hour was two 
P.M., and yet, at three o’clock of this 
day, he did not come in. 

This was reported to Lady Bassett, and 
it gave her some little anxiety; for she 
suspected he might possibly be in the 
company of Ruperta Bassett; and, al- 
though she did not herself much object 
to that, she objected very much to have 
it talked about and made a fuss. So she 
went herself to the end of the lawn, and 
out into the meadow, that a servant 
might not find the young people to- 
gether, if her suspicion was correct. 

She went into the meadow and called 
‘¢Compton! Compton!’’ as loud as she 
could, but there was no reply. | 

Then she came in, and began to be 
alarmed, and sent servants about in all 
directions. 

But two hours elapsed, and there were 
no tidings. ‘The thing looked serious. 

She sent out grooms well mounted to 
scour the country. One of these fell in 
with Sir Charles, who thereupon came 
home and found his wife in a pitiable 
state. She was sitting in an armchair, 
trembling and crying hysterically. 

She caught his hand directly, and 
grasped it like a vise. 

‘‘It is Richard Bassett !’’ she cried. 
‘*He knows how to wound and kill me. 
He has stolen our child.”’ 

Sir Charles hurried out, and, soon after 


A TERRIBLE 


that, Reginald arrived, and stood awe- 
struck at her deplorable condition. 

Sir Charles came back heated and 
anxious, kissed Reginald, told him in 
three words his brother was missing, 
and then informed Lady Bassett that 
he had learned something very extraor- 
dinary ; Richard Bassett’s little girl had 
also disappeared, and his people were out 
looking after her. 

«“ Ah, they are together,’’ cried Lady 
Bassett. 

‘Together? a son of mine consorting 
with that viper’s brood! ”’ 

‘What does that poor child know? 
-Oh,.find him for me, if you love that 
dear child’s mother ! ”’ 

Sir Charles hurried out directly, but 
was met at the door by a servant, who 
blurted out, ‘‘ The men have dragged the 
fish-ponds, Sir Charles, and they want to 
know if they shall drag the brook.’’ 

‘Hold your tongue, idiot!’’ cried Sir 
Charles, and thrust him out; but the 
wiseacre had not spoken in vain. Lady 
Bassett moaned, and went into worse 
hysterics, with nobody near her but Regi- 
nald. 

That worthy, never having seen a lady 
in hysterics, and not being hardened at 
all. points, uttered a sympathetic howl, 
and flung his arms round her neck. 
“Qh! oh! oh! Don’t cry, mamma.”’ 

Lady Bassett shuddered at his touch, 
but did not repel him. 

*‘1’ll find him for you,”’ said the boy, 
‘if you will leave off crying.”’ 

She stared in his face a moment, and 
then went on as before. 

“‘Mamma,”’ said he, getting impatient, 
“do listen to me. I'll find him easy 
enough, if you will only listen.’’ 

“You! you!’’? and she stared wildly 
at him. 

«Ay, I know a sight more than the 
fools about here. I’m a poacher. Just 
you put me on to histrack. I’ll soon run 
into him, if he is above ground.”’ 

‘*A child like you!’’ cried Lady Bas- 
sett; “‘how can you do that ?’’ and she 
began to wring her hands again. 

*“T’ll show you,” said the boy, getting 
very impatient, ‘‘if you will just leave off 


TEMPTATION. 171 
crying like a great baby, and come to any 
place you like where he has been to-day 
and left a mark—’’ 

“Ah!” cried Lady Bassett. 

*‘1’m a poacher,’’ repeated Reginald, 
quite proudly; ‘‘ you forget that.”’ 

‘‘Come with me,” cried Lady Bassett, 
starting up. She whipped on her bonnet, 
and ran with him down the lawn. 

‘There, Reginald,’’ said she, panting, 
‘‘] think my darling was here this after- 
noon; yes, yes, he must; for he had a 
key of the door, and it is open.’’ 

‘‘All right,’? said Reginald ; 
into the field.’’ 

He ran about like a dog hunting, and 
soon found marks among the cowslips. 

‘Somebody has been gathering a nose- 
gay here to-day,’’ said he; ‘‘now, mam- 
ma, there’s only two ways out of this 
field—let us go straight to that gate; that 
is the likeliest.”’ 

Near the gate was some clay, and Regi- 
nald showed her several prints of small 
feet. 

‘*Look,’’ said he, ‘* here’s the track of 
two—one’s a gal; how I know, here’s a 
sole to this shoe no wider nor a knife. 
Come on.”’ 

In the next field he was baffled for a 
long time; but at last he found a place 
in a dead hedge where they had gone 
through. 

*“See,’’ said he, “‘ these twigs are fresh 
broken, and here’s a bit of the gal’s frock. 
Oh! won’t she catch it ?”’ 

“Oh, you brave, clever boy!’’ cried 
Lady Bassett. 

“Come on! ’’ shouted the urchin. 

He hunted like a beagle, and saw like a 
bird, with his savage, glittering eye. He 
was on fire with the ardor of the chase; 
and, not to dwell too long on what has 
been so often and so well written by oth- 
ers, in about an hour and a half he brought 
the anxious, palpitating, but now hopeful 
mother, to the neighborhood of Bassett’s 
wood. Here he trusted to his own in- 
stinct. ‘‘ They have gone into the wood,”’ 
said he, ‘‘and Idon’t blame ’em. I found 
my way here long before his age. I say, 
don’t you tell; I’ve snared plenty of the 
governor’s hares in that wood.”’ 


““come 


172 


He got to the edge of the wood and ran 
down the side. At last he found the 
marks of small feet on a low bank, and, 
darting over it, discovered the fainter 
traces on some decaying leaves inside the 
wood. 

‘‘There,’’ said he; “‘ now it is just as if 
you had got them in your pocket, for 
they’ll never find their way out of this 
wood. Bless your heart, why J used to 
get lost in it at first.”’ 

‘“‘ Lost in the wood!’’ cried Lady Bas- 
sett; ‘‘but he will die of fear, or be 
eaten by wild beasts; and it is getting so 
dark.”’ 

«What about that? Night or day is 
all one tome. What will you give me if 
I find him before midnight ? ”’ 

‘¢ Anything:I’ve got in the world.”’ 

«“Give me a Sovereign ? ”’ 

<A thousand ! ”’ 

‘Give me a kiss ?”’ 

« A hundred ! ”’ 

«Then I’1l tell you what I’l1 do—I don’t 
mind a little trouble, to stop your crying, 
mamma, because you are the right sort. 
I'll get the village out, and we will tread 
the wood with torches, an’ all for them as 
can’t see by night ; I can see all one; and 
you shall have your kid home to supper. 
You see, there’s a heavy dew, and he is 
not like me, that would rather sleep in 
this wood than the best bed in London 
city ; a night in a wood would about set- 
tle his hash. So here goes. I can runa 
mile in six minutes and a half.’’ 


With these words, the strange boy 
was off like an arrow from a bow. 

Lady Bassett, exhausted by anxiety 
and excitement, was glad to sit down ; 
her trembling heart would not let her 
leave the place that she now began to 
hope contained her child. She sat down 
and waited patiently. 

The sun set, the moon rose, the stars 
glittered ; the infinite leaves stood out 
dark and solid, as if cut out of black 
marble; all was dismal silence and dread 
suspense to the solitary watcher. 

Yet the lady of Huntercombe Hall sat 
on, sick at heart, but patient, beneath that 
solemn sky. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


She shuddered a little as the cold dews 
gathered on her, for she was a woman 
nursed in luxury’s lap; but she never 
moved. 

The silence was dismal. Had that wild 
boy fogotten his promise, or were there 
no parents in the village, that their feet 
lagged so? 

It was nearly ten o’clock, when her 
keen ears, Strained to the utmost, dis- 
covered a faint buzzing of voices; but 
where she could not tell. 

The sounds increased and increased, 
and then there was a temporary silence ; 
and after that a faint hallooing in the 
wood to her right. The wood was. five 
hundred acres, and the bulk of it lay in 
front and to her left. 

The hallooing got louder and louder ; 
the whole wood seemed to echo; her 
heart beat high ; lights glimmered nearer 
and nearer, hares and rabbits pattered 
by and startled her, and pheasants 
thundered off their roosts with an in- 
credible noise, owls flitted, and bats in- 
numerable, disturbed and terrified by 
the glaring lights and loud resounding 
halloos. 

Nearer, nearer came the sounds, till at 
last a line of men and boys, full fifty, car- 
rying torches and lanterns, came up, and 
lighted up the dew-spangled leaves, and 
made the mother’s heart leap with joyful 
hope at succor so powerful. 

Oh, she could have kissed the stout 
village blacksmith, whose deep sonorous 
lungs rang close to her. Never had any 
man’s voice sounded to her so like a god’s 
as this stout blacksmith’s “ hilloop ! hil- 
loop !’’ close and loud in her ear, and 
those at the end of the line hallooed ° 
‘hillo-op; hillo-op!’’ like an echo; and 
so they passed on, through bush and 
brier, till their voices died away in the 
distance. 

A boy detached himself from the line, 
and ran to Lady Bassett with a traveling 
rug. It was Reginald. 

‘“You put on this,’’ said he. He shook 
it, and, standing on tiptoe, put it over 
her shoulders. 

‘Thank you, dear,’’ said she. 
is papa? ’’ 


“Where 


A THRRIBLE 


‘“‘QOh, he is in the line, and the High- 
more swell and all.” 

‘Mr. Richard Bassett ? ”’ 

«Ay, his kid is out on the loose, as 
well as ours.”’ 

‘““Oh, Reginald, if they should quar- 
rel! ”’ 

«Why, our governor can lick him, 
can’t he?”’ 


CHAPTER XL. 


‘Ou, don’t talk so. I wouldn't for all 
the world they should quarrel.”’ 

‘¢Well, we have got enough fellows to 
part them if they do.’’ 

“Dear Reginald, you have been. so 
good to me, and you are so clever; 
speak to some of the men, and let there 
be no more quarreling between papa and 
that man.” 

‘‘ All right,’ said the boy. 

“On second thoughts take me _ to 
papa; Ill be by his side, and then they 
cannot.”’ 

“You want to walk through the wood ? 
that is a good joke. Why, it islike walk- 
ing through a river, and the young wood 
slapping your eyes, for you can’t see 
every twig by this light, and the leaves 
Sponging your face and shoulders: and 
the briers would soon strip your gown 
into ribbons, and make your little ankles 
bleed. No, you are a lady; you stay 
where you are, and let us men work it. 
We shan’t find him yet awhile. I must 
get near the governor. When we find 
my lord, Ill give a whistle you could 
hear a mile off.”’ 

‘*Oh, Reginald, are you sure he is in 
the wood ? ”’ 

“Vd bet my head to a chany orange. 
You might as well ask me, when I track 
a badger to his hole, and no signs of his 
going out again, whether old long-claws 
is there. I wish I was as sure of never 
going back to school as I am of finding 
that little lot. The only thing I don’t 


TEMPTATION. 173 
like is, the young muff’s not giving usa 
halloo back. But, any way, Ill find ’em, 
alive or dead.’’ 

And, with this pleasing assurance, the 
little imp scudded off, leaving the mother 
glued to the spot with terror. 

For full an hour more the torches 
gleamed, though fainter and_ fainter ; 
and so full was the wood of echoes, that 
the voices, though distant, seemed to 
halloo all round the agonized mother. 

But presently there was a continuous 
yell, quite different from the isolated 
shouts, a distant but unmistakable howl 
of victory that made a bolt of ice shoot 
down her back, and then her heart to 
glow like fire. 

It was followed by a keen whistle. 

She fell on her knees and thanked God 
for her boy. 


In the middle of this wood was a shallow 
excavation, an old chalk-pit, unused for 
many years. It was never deep, and 
had been half filled up with dead leaves ; 
these, once blown into the hollow, or 
dropped from the trees, had accumu- 
lated. 

The very middle of the line struck on 
this place, and Moss, the old keeper, 
who was near the center, had no sooner 
cast his eyes into it than he halted, and 
uttered a stentorian halloo well known 
to sportsmen—‘‘ SEE HO!”’ 


A dead halt, a low murmur, and in a 
very few seconds the line was a circle, 
and all the torches that had not expired 
held high in a flaming ring over the 
prettiest little sight that wood had ever 
presented. 

The old keeper had not given tongue 
on conjecture, like some youthful hound. 
In a little hollow of leaves, which the 
boy had scraped out, lay Master Comp- 
ton and Miss Ruperta, on their little 
backs, each with an arm round the 
other’s neck, enjoying the sweet sound 
sleep of infancy, which neither the hor- 
ror of their situation—babes in the wood 
—nor the shouts of fifty people had in 
the smallest degree disturbed; to be 
sure, they had undergone great fatigue. 


174 


Young master wore a coronet of blue- 
bells on his golden head, young miss a 
wreath of cowslips on her ebon locks. 
The pair were flowers, cherubs, children 
—every thing that stands for young, 
tender, and lovely. 

The honest villagers gaped, and roared 
in chorus, and held high their torches, 
and gazed with reverential delight. Not 
for them was it to finger the little gentle- 
folks, but only to devour them with ad- 
miring’ eyes. 

Indeed, the picture was carried home to 
many a humble hearth, and is spoken of 
to this day:in Huntercombe village. 

But the pale and anxious fathers were 
in no state to see pictures—they only saw 
their children; Sir Charles and Richard 
Bassett came round with the general 
rush, saw, and dashed into the pit. 

Strange to say, neither knew the other 
was there. Each seized his child, and 
tore it away from the contact of the 
other child, as if from a viper; in which 
natural but harsh act they saw each 
other for the first time, and their eyes 
gleamed ina moment with hate and de- 
fiance over their loving children. 

Here was a picture of a different kind, 
and if the melancholy Jaques, or any 
other gentleman with a foible for think- 
ing in a wood, had been there, methinks 
he had moralized very prettily on the 
hideousness of hate and the beauty of the 
sentiment it had interrupted so fiercely. 
But it escaped this sort of comment for 
about eight years. Well, all this woke 
the bairns; the lights dazzled them, the 
people scared them. Each hid a little 
face on the paternal shoulder. 

The fathers, like wild beasts, each car- 
rying off a lamb, withdrew, glaring at 
each other; but the very next moment 
the stronger and better sentiment pre- 
vailed, and they kissed and blessed their 
restored treasures, and forgot their en- 
emies for a time. 

Sir Charles’s party followed him, and 
supped at Huntercombe, every man Jack 
of them. 

Reginald, who had delivered a terrific 
cat-call, now ran off to Lady Bassett. 
There she was, still on her’ knees. 


WORKS OF CHARLES 


READE. 


**Wound! found !’’ he shouted. 

She clasped him in her arms and wept 
for joy. 

‘‘My eyes!’ said he, ‘‘ what a one you 
are to cry! You come home; you’ll 
catch your death o’ cold.’’ 

‘“No, no; take me tomy child at once.’’ 

“Can't be done; the governor has car- 
ried him off through the wood; and I 
ain’t a going to let you travel the wood. 
You come with me: we’ll go the short 
cut, and be home as soon as them.’’ 

She complied, though trembling all 
over. 

On the way he told her where the chil- 
dren had been discovered, and in what 
attitude. 

‘‘ Little darlings!’’ said she. ‘‘ But he 
has frightened his poor mother, and 
nearly broken her heart. Oh!”’ 

“If you cry any more, mamma—Shut 
up,-I tell you!” 

“© Must? oh iy 

‘* Yes, or you’ll catch pepper.”’ 

Then he pulled her along, gabbling all 
the time. ‘‘ Those two swells didn’t quar- 
rel after all, you see.’’ 

‘Thank Heaven !”’ 

‘*But they looked at each other like 
hobelixes, and pulled the kids away like 
pison. Ha! ha! I say, the young ’uns 
ain’t of the same mind as the old ’uns. 1 
say, though, our Compton is not a bad 
sort; I’m blowed if he hadn’t taken off 
his tippet to put round his gal. I say, 
don’t you think that little chap has begun 
rather early? Why, J didn’t trouble my 
head about the gals till 1 was eleven 
years old.’’ 

Lady Bassett was too much agitated 
to discuss these delicate little questions 
just then. 

She replied as irrelevantly as ever a 
lady did. ‘‘Oh, you good, brave, clever 
boy !’’ said she. 

Then she stopped a moment to kiss 
him heartily. ‘‘ I shall never forget this 
night, dear. I shall always make ex- 
cuses for you. Oh, shall we never get 
home ?”’ 

“We shall be home as soon as they 
will,’’ said Reginald. “‘Come on.’’ 

He gabbled to her the whole way ; but 


——— A 


0 


A THRRIBLE 


the reader has probably had enough of 
his millelack. 

Lady Bassett reached home, and had 
just ordered a large fire in Compton’s bed- 
room, when Sir Charles came in, bring- 
ing the boy. 

The lady ran out screaming, and went 
down on her knees, with her arms out, as 
only a mother can stretch them to her 
child. : 

There was not a word of scolding that 
night. He had made her suffer; but 
what of that? She had no egotism; she 
was a true mother. Her boy had been 
lost, and was found; and she was the 
happiest soul in creation. 

But the fathers of these babes in the 
wood were both intensely mortified, and 
took measures to keep those little lovers 
apart in future. Richard Bassett locked 
up his gate: Sir Charles padlocked his ; 
and they both told their wives they really 
must be more vigilant. 

The poor children, being in disgrace, 
did not venture to remonstrate. But 
they used often to think of each other, 
and took a liking to the British Sunday; 
for then they saw each other in church. 

By-and-by even that consolation ceased. 
Ruperta was sent to school, and passed 
her holidays at the sea-side. 


To return to Reginald, he was com- 
pelled to change his clothes that evening, 
but was allowed to sit up, and, when the 
heads of the house were a little calmer, 
became the hero of the night. 

Sir Charles, gazing on him with parental 
pride, said, ‘‘ Reginald, you have begun 
a new life to-day, and begun it well. Let 
us forget the past, and start fresh to-day, 
with the love and gratitude of both your 
parents.”’ 

The boy hung his head and said noth- 
ing in reply. 

Lady Bassett came to his assistance. 
‘* He will; he will. Don’t say a word 
about the past. He is a good, brave, 
beautiful boy, and 1 adore.him.”’ 

‘‘ And I like you, mamma,”’ said Regi- 
nald graciously. | 

From that day the boy had a champion 
in Lady Bassett ; and Heaven knows, she 


TEMPTATION. 175 
had no sinecure ; poor, Reginald’s virtues. 
were too eccentric to balance his’ faults 
for long together. His parents could not 
have a child lost in a wood eyery day; 
but good taste and propriety can be 
offended every hour when one is so young, 
active, and savage as Master Reginald. 

He was up at five, and doing wrong all 
day. 

Hours in the stables, learning to talk 
horsey, and smell dunghilly. 

Hours in the village, gossiping and 
romping. 

In good company, an owl. 

In bad, or low company, a cricket, a 
nightingale, a magpie. 

He was seen at a neighboring fair, play- 
ing the fiddle in a booth to dancing yokels, 
and receiving their pence. 

He was caught by Moss wiring hairs in 
Bassett’s wood, within twenty yards of 
the place where he had found the babes 
in the wood so nobly. 

Remonstrated with tenderly and sol- 
emnly, he informed Sir Charles that 
poaching was a thing he could not live 
without, and he modestly asked to have 
Bassett’s wood given him to poach in, 
offering, as a.consideration, to keep all 
other poachers out: as a greater induce- 


| ment, he represented that he should not 


require a house, but only a coarse sheet 
to stretch across an old saw-pit, anda 
pair of blankets for winter use—one under, 
one over. 

Sir Charles was often sad, sometimes 
indignant. 

Lady Bassett excused each enormity 
with pathetic ingenuity; excused, but 
suffered, and indeed pined visibly, for 
all this time he was tormenting her as 
few women in her position have been tor- 
mented. Her life was a struggle of con- 
testing emotions; she was wounded, 
harassed, perplexed, and so miserable, 
she would have welcomed death, that 
her husband might read that Manuscript 
and cease to suffer, and she: escape the 
shame of confessing, and of living after 
it. 

In one word, she was expiating. 

Neither the excuses she made nor the 
misery she suffered escaped Sir Charles. 


176 WORKS 

He said to her at last, ‘‘My own Bella, 
this unhappy boy is killing you. Dear 
as he is to me, you are dearer. I must 
send him away again.”’ 

‘He saved our darling,’ 
faintly, but she could say no more. 
had exhausted excuse. 

Sir Charles made inquiries everywhere, 
and at last his attention was drawn to 
the following advertisement in the 7?mes: 


? 


said she, 
He 


NMANAGEABLE, Backward, or other BOYS, 
carefully TRAINED, and EDUCATED, by a 
married rector. Home comforts. Moderate terms. 
Address Dr. Beecher, Fennymore, Cambridgeshire. 


He wrote to this gentleman, and the 
correspondence was encouraging. ‘‘ These 
scapegraces,’’ said the artist in tuition, 
‘are like crab-trees ; abominable till you 
graft them, and then they bear the best 
fruit.’’ 

While the letters were passing, came a 
climax. Reckless Reginald could keep no 
bounds intact: his inward definition of a 
boundary was ‘‘a thing you should goa 
good way out of your way rather than 
not overleap.’’ 

Accordingly, he was often on High- 
more farm at night, and even in High- 
more garden ; the boundary wall tempted 
him so. 

One light but windy night, when every- 
body that could put his head under cover, 
and keep it there, did, reckless Reginald 
was out enjoying the fresh breezes; he 
mounted the boundary wall of Highmore 
like a cat, to see what amusement might 
offer. Thus perched, he speedily discov- 
ered a bright light in Highmore dining- 
room. 

He dropped from the wall directly, and 
stole softly over the grass and peered in 
at the window. 

He saw a table with a powerful lamp 
on it; on that table, and gleaming in that 
light, were several silver vessels of rare 
size and workmanship, and Mr. Bassett, 
with his coat off, and a green baize apron 
on, was cleaning one of these with brush 
and leather. He had already cleaned the 
others, for they glittered prodigiously. 

Reginald’s black eye gloated and glit- 


OF CHARLES READE. 


tered at this unexpected display of wealth 
in so dazzling a form. 

But this was nothing to the revelation 
in store. When Mr. Bassett had done 
with that piece of plate he went to the 
paneled wall, and opened a door so nicely 
adapted to the panels, that a stranger 
would hardly have discovered it. Yet it 
was an enormous door, and, being opened, 
revealed a still larger closet, lined with 
green velvet and fitted with shelves from 
floor to ceiling. 

Here shone, in all their glory, the old 
plate of two good families : that is to say, 
half the old plate of the Bassetts, and all 
the old plate of the Goodwyns, from 
whom came Highmore to Richard Bas- 
sett through his mother Ruperta Good- 
wyn, So named after her grandmother ; 
so named after her aunt; so named after 
her godmother; so named after her fath- 
er, Prince Rupert, cavalier, chemist, glass- 
blower, etc., etc. 

The wall.seemed ablaze with suns and 
moons, for many of the chased goblets, 
plates, and dishes were silver-gilt : none 
of your filmy electro-plate, but gold laid 
on thick, by the old mercurial process, in 
days when they that wrought in precious ” 
metals were honest—for want of knowing 


“how to cheat. 


Glued to the pane, gloating on this 
constellation of gold suns and_ silver 
moons, and trembling with Bohemian 
excitement, reckless Reginald heard not 
a Stealthy step upon the grass behind 
him. 

He had trusted to a fact in optics, for- 
getting the doctrine of shadows. 

The Scotch servant saw from a pantry 
window the shadow of a cap projected on 
the grass, with a face, and part of a 
body. She stepped out, and got upon 
the grass. 

Finding it was only a boy, she was 
brave as well as cunning; and, owing 
to the wind and his absorption, stole on 
him unheard, and pinned him with her 
strong hands by both his shoulders. 

Young Hopeful uttered a screech of 
dismay, and administered a back kick 
that made Jessie limp for two days, and 
scream very lustily for the present. 


A TERRIBLE 


Mr. Bassett, at this dialogue of yells, 
dropped a cotfee-pot with a crash and a 
tinkle, and ran out directly, and secured 
young Hopeful, who thereupon began to 
quake and remonstrate. 

‘“‘T was only taking a look,’’ said he. 
‘¢Where’s the harm of that ?’’ 

“You were trespassing, sir, 
Richard Bassett. 

‘¢ What is the harm of that, governor ? 
You can come over all our place, for what 
I care.’ 

‘“Thank you. 
own place.”’ 

“Well, I don’t. I say, old chap, don’t 
hit me. ’Twas I put *em all on the scent 
of your kid, you know.” 

“So I have heard. Well, then, this 
makes us quits.’”’ 

‘¢ Don’t it? You ain’t such a bad sort, 
after all.’’ 

‘©Only mind, Mr. Bassett, if I catch 
you prying here again, that will be a 
fresh account, and I shall open it with 
a horsewhip.”’ 

He then gave him a little push, and 
the boy fied like the wind. When he was 
gone, Richard Bassett became rather un- 
easy. He had hitherto concealed, even 
from his own family, the great wealth 
his humble home contained. His secret 
was now public. Reginald had no end of 
low companions. If burglars got scent 
of this, it might be very, awkward. At 
last he hit upon a defense. He got one 
of those hooks ending in a screw which 
are used for pictures, and screwed it 
into the inside of the cupboard door near 
the top. To this he fastened a long piece 
of catgut, and carried it through the 
floor. His bed was just above the cup- 
board door, and he attached the gut to 
a bell by his bedside. By this means 
nobody could open that cupboard with- 
out ringing in his ears. 

Jessie told Tom, Tom told Maria and 
Harriet ; Harriet and Maria told every- 
body; somebody told Sir Charles. He 
was deeply mortified. 

“You young idiot!’ said he, ‘‘ would 
nothing less than this serve your turn ? 
must you go and lower me and your- 
self by giving just offense to my one 


ple 


said 


I prefer to keep to my 


TEMPTATION. mia 
enemy ?—the man I hate and despise, 
and who is always on the watch to in- 
jure or affront me. Oh, who would, be 
a father! There, pack up your things; 
you will go to school next morning at 
eight o’clock. 

Mr. Reginald packed accordingly, but 
that did not occupy long; so he sallied 
forth, and, taking for granted that it 
was Richard Bassett who had been so 
meun as to tell, he purchased some paint 
and brushes and a rope, and languished 
until midnight. 

But when that magic hour came he 
was brisk as .a_ bee, let himself down 
from his veranda, and stole to Richard 
Bassett’s front door, and inscribed there- 
on, in large and glaring letters, 


‘‘ JERRY SNEAK, Ksq., 
Tell-Tale Tit.’’ 


He then returned home much calmed 
and comforted, climbed up his rope and 
into his room, and there slept sweetly, as 
one who had discharged his duty to his 
neighbor and society in general. 

In the morning, however, he was very 
active, hurried the grooms, and was off 
before the appointed time. 

Sir Charles came down to breakfast, 
and lo! young Hopeful gone, without the 
awkward ceremony of leave-taking. 

Sir Charles found, as usual, many deli- 
cacies on his table, and among them one 
rarer to him than ortolan, pin-tail, or 
wild turkey (in which last my soul de- 
lights); for he found a letter from Rich- 
ard Bassett, Esq. 


‘“Sir—Some nights since we caught 
your successor that is to be, at my din- 
ing-room window, prying into my private 
affairs. Having the honor of our family 
at heart, I was about to administer a 
little wholesome correction, when he re- 
minded me he had been instrumental in 
tracking Miss Bassett, and thereby res- 
cuing her: upon this I was, naturally, 
mollified, and sent him about his busi- 
ness, hoping to have seen the last of him 
at Highmore. 

‘‘This morning my door is covered with 


178 WORKS 
opprobrious epithets, and as Mr. Bassett 
bought paint and brushes at the shop 
yesterday afternoon, it is doubtless to 
him I am indebted for them. 

‘‘T make no comments; I simply re- 
cord the facts, and put them down to 
your credit, and your son’s. 

‘¢ Your obedient servant, 
‘‘ RICHARD BASSETT.’” 


Lady Bassett did not come down to 
breakfast that morning; so Sir Charles 
digested this dish in solitude. 

He was furious with Reginald; but as 
Richard Bassett’s remonstrance was in- 
tended to insult him, he wrote back as 
follows: 


‘«‘Str—I am deeply grieved that a son 
of mine should descend to look in at your 
windows, or to write anything whatever 
upon your door; and I will take care it 
shall never recur. 

‘ Yours obediently, 
‘*CHARLES DYKE BASSETT.”’ 


This little correspondence was salutary : 
it fanned the coals of hatred between the 
cousins. 


Reckless Reginald soon found he had 
caught a Tartar in his new master. 

That gentleman punished him severely 
for every breach of discipline. The study 
was a cool dark room, with one window 
looking north, and that window barred. 
Here he locked up the erratic youth for 
hours at a time, upon the slightest es- 
capade. 

Reginald wrote a honeyed letter to Sir 
Charles, bewailing his lot, and praying 
to be removed. 

Sir Charles replied sternly, and sent 
him a copy of Mr. Richard Bassett’s 
letter. He wrote to Mr. Beecher at the 
same time, expressing his full approval. 

Thus disciplined, the boy began to 
change; he became moody, sullen, silent, 
and even sleepy. This was the less won- 
derful, that he generally escaped at night 
to a gypsy camp, and courted a gypsy 
girl, who was nearly as handsome as 
himself, besides being older, and far 
more knowing. 


OF CHARLES READE. 


His tongue went like a mill, and the 
whole tribe soon knew all about him 
and his parents. 

One morning the servants got up su- 
pernaturally early, to wash. Mr. Regi- 
nald was detected stealing back to his 
roost, and reported to the master. 

Mr. Beecher had him up _ directly, 
locked him into the study alone, put 
the other students into the drawing- 
room, and erected bars to his bedroom 
window. . 

A few days of this, and he pined like 
a bird in a cage. 

A few more, and his gypsy girl came 
fortune-teling to the servants, and 
wormed out the truth. 

Then she came at night under his win- 
dow, and made him a signal. He told 
her his hard case, and told her also a 
resolution he had come to. She informed 
the tribe. The tribe consulted. A keen 
saw was flung up to him; in two nights 
he was through the bars; the third he 
was free, and joined his sable friends. 

They struck their tents, and decamped 
with horses, asses, tents, and baggage, 
and were many miles away by daybreak, 
without troubling turnpikes. 

The boy left not a line behind him, and 
Mr. Beecher half hoped he might come 
back ; still he sent to the nearest station, 
and telegraphed to Huntercombe. 

Sir Charles mounted a fleet horse, and 
rode off at once into Cambridgeshire. 
He set inquiries on foot, and learned that 
the boy had been seen consorting with 
a tribe of gypsies. He heard, also, that 
these were rather high gypsies, many of 
them foreigners; and that they dealt in 
horses, and had a farrier; and that one 
or two of the girls were handsome, and 
also singers. 

Sir Charles telegraphed for detectives 
from London; wrote to the mayors of 
towns; advertised, with full description 
and large reward, and brought such press- 
ure to bear upon the Egyptians, that 
the band began to fear: they consulted, 
and took measures for their own security ;_ 
none too soon, for, they being encamped 
on Grey’s Common in Oxfordshire, Sir 
Charles and the rural police rode into 


A THRRIBLE 


the camp and demanded young Hope- 
ful. 

They were equal to the occasion; at 
first they knew nothing of the matter, 
and, with injured innocence, invited a full 
inspection. 

The invitation was accepted. 

Then, all of a sudden, one of the women 
affected to be struck with an idea. ‘It 
is the young gentleman who wanted to 
join us in Cambridgeshire.”’ 

Then all their throats opened at once. 
‘Yes, gentleman, there was a lovely 
young gentleman wanted to come with 
us; but we wouldn’t have him. What 
could we do with him? ”’ 

Sir Charles left them under surveil- 
lance, and continued his researches, tele- 
graphing Lady Bassett twice every day. 


A dark stranger came into Hunter- 
combe village, no longer young, but still 
a striking figure: had once, no doubt, 
been superlatively handsome. Even now, 
his long hair was black and his eye could 
glitter: but his life had impregnated his 
noble features with hardness and mean- 
ness; his large black eye was restless, 
keen, and servile: an excellent figure for 
a painter, though; born in Spain, he was 
not afraid of color, had a red cap on his 
snaky black hair, and a striped waist- 
coat. 

He inquired for Mr. Meyrick’s farm. 

He soon found his way thither, and 
asked for Mrs. Meyrick. 

The female servant who opened the 
door ran her eye up and down him, and 
said, bruskly, ‘‘ What do you want with 
her, my man? because she is busy.”’ 

“*Oh, she will see me, miss.’’ 

Softened by the ‘‘miss,’’ the girl 
laughed, and said, ‘‘ What makes you 
think that, my man? ”’ 

*‘Give her this, miss,’’ said the gypsy, 
**and she will come to me.”’ 

He held her out a dirty crumpled piece 
of paper. 

Sally, whose hands were wet from the 
tub, whipped her hand under the corner 
of her checkered apron, and so took the 
note with a finger and thumb operating 
through the linen. By this means she 


TEMPTATION. 179 
avoided two evils—her fingers did not 
wet the letter, and the letter did not 
dirty her fingers. 

She took it into the kitchen to her mis- 
tress, whose arms were deep in a wash- 
tub. | 

Mrs. Meyrick had played the fine lady 
at first starting, and for six months 
would not put her hand to anything. 
But those twin cajolers of the female 
heart, Dignity and Laziness, made her 
so utterly wretched, that she returned 
to her old habits of work, only she com- 
bined with it the sweets of domination. 

Sally came in and said, ‘‘It’s an old 
gypsy, which he have brought you this.”’ 

Mrs. Meyrick instantly wiped the soap- 
suds from her brown but shapely arms, 
and, whipping a wet hand under her 
apron, took the note just as Sally had. 
It contained these words only : 


“ Nurse—The old Romanee will tell 
you all about me. REGINALD.”’ 


She had no sooner read it than she took 
her sleeves down, and whipped her shawl 
off a peg and put it on, and took off her 
apron—and all for an old gypsy. No 
stranger must take her for anything but 
a lady. 

Thus embellished in a turn of the hand, 
she went hastily to the door. 

She and the gypsy both started at 
sight of each other, and Mrs. Meyrick 
screamed. 


“Why, what brings you here, old 
man?’’ said she, panting. The gypsy 
answered with oily sweetness, ‘The 
little gentleman sent me, my dear. 
Why, you look like a queen.”’ 

‘Hush !’’ said Mrs. Meyrick.—‘‘ Come 
in here.”’ 

She made the old gypsy sit down, and 
she sat close to him. 

““Speak low, daddy,’’ said she, ‘‘ and 
tell me all about my boy, my beautiful 
boyn 


The old gypsy told Mrs. Meyrick the 
wrongs of Reginald that had driven him 


to this; and she fell to crying and la- 


180 


menting, and inveighing against all con- 
cerned—schoolmaster, Sir Charles, Lady 
Bassett, and the gypsies. Them the old 
man defended, and assured her the young 
gentleman was in good hands, and would 
be made a little king of, all the more 
that Keturah had told them there was 
gypsy blood in him. 

Mrs. Meyrick resented this loudly, and 
then returned to her grief. 

When she had indulged that grief for a 
long time, she felt a natural desire to 
quarrel with somebody, and she actually 
put on her bonnet, and was going to the 
Hall to give Lady Bassett a bit of her 
mind, for she said that lady had never 
shown the feelings of a woman for the 
lamb. 

But she thought better of it, and post- 
poned the visit. ‘‘I shall be sure to say 
something I shall be sorry for after,”’ 
said she; so She sat down again, and re- 
turned to her grief. 

Nor could she ever shake it off as 
thoroughly as she had done any other 
trouble in her life. 

Months after this, she said to Sally, 
with a burst of tears, “‘I never nursed 
but one, and I shall never nurse another ; 
and now he is across the seas.”’ 

She kept the old gypsy at the farm ; 
or, to speak more correctly, she made 
the farm his headquarters. She assigned 
him the only bedroom he would accept, 
viz., a cattle-shed, open on one side. She 
used ‘often to have him into her room 
when she was alone; she gave him some 
of her husband’s clothes, and made him 
wear a decent hat; by these means she 
effaced, in some degree, his nationality, 
and then she compelled her servants to 
call him ‘‘ the foreign gent.”’ 

The foreign gent was very apt to dis- 
appear in fine weather, but rain soon 
drove him back to her fireside, and 
hunger to her flesh-pots. 

On the very day the foreign gent came 
to Meyrick’s farm Lady Bassett had a 
letter by post from Reginald. 


““DEAR Mamma—I am gone with the 
gypsies across the water. I am sorry to 
leave you. You are the right sort: but 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


they tormented me so with their books 
and their dark rooms. It is very un- 
fortunate to be a boy. When I am a 
mar, I shall be too old to be tormented, 
and then I will come back. 
‘* Your dutiful son, 
‘¢ REGINALD.”’ 


Lady Bassett telegraphed Sir Charles, 
and he returned to Huntercombe, looking 
old, sad, and worn. 

Lady Bassett set herself to comfort 
and cheer him, and this was her gentle 
office for many a long month. 

She was the more fit for it, that her 
own health and spirits revived the mo- 
ment Reginald left the country with his 
friends the gypsies ; the color crept back 
to her cheek, her spirits revived, and she 
looked as handsome, and almost as 
young, aS when she married. She tasted 
tranquillity. Year after year went by 
without any news of Reginald, and the 
hope grew that he would never cross her 
threshold again, and Compton be Sir 
Charles’s heir without any more trouble. 


CHAPTER XL 


OuR story now makes a bold skip. 
Compton Bassett was fourteen years 
old, a youth highly cultivated in mind 
and trained in body, but not very tall, 
and rather effeminate looking, because he 
was so fair and his skin so white. 

For all that, he was one of the bowlers 
in the Wolcombe Eleven, whose cricket- 
ground was the very meadow in which he 
had erst gathered cowslips with Ruperta 
Bassett; and he had a canoe, which he 
carried to adjacent streams, however 
narrow, and paddled it with singular 
skill and vigor. <A neighboring miller, 
suffering under drought, was heard to 
say, ‘‘ There ain’t water enough to float 
a duck; nought can swim but the dab- 
chicks and Muster Bassett.’’ 


A THERRIBLE 


He was also a pedestrian, and got his 
father to take long walks with him, and 
leave the horses to eat their oats in 
peace. 

In these walks young master botanized 
and geologized his own father, and Sir 
Charles gave him a little politics, histo- 
ry, and English poetry, in return. He 
had a tutor fresh from Oxford for the 
classics. 

One day. returning with his father 
from a walk, they met a young lady 
walking toward them from the village ; 
she was tall, and a superb brunette. 

Now it was rather a rare thing to see 
a lady walking through that village, so 
both Sir Charles and his son looked 
keenly at her as she came toward them. 

Compton turned crimson, and raised 
his hat to her rather awkwardly. 

Sir Charles, who did not know the lady 
from Eve, saluted her, nevertheless, and 
with infinite grace; for Sir Charles, in 
his youth, had lived with some of the 
élite of French society, and those gentle- 
men bow to the person whom their com- 
panion bows to. Sir Charles had im- 
ported this excellent trait of politeness, 
and always practiced it, though not the 
custom in England, the more the pity. 

As soon as the young lady had passed 
and was out of hearing, Sir Charles said 
to Compton, ‘‘ Who is that lovely girl? 
Why, how the boy is blushing ! ”’ 

“‘Oh, papa ! ”’ 

“Well, what is the matter ? ”’ 

“Don’t you see? It is herself come 
back from school.”’ 

‘*T have no doubt it is herself, and not 
her sister, but who 7s herself ? ”’ 

**Ruperta Bassett.’’ 


‘Richard Bassett’s daughter! impos- 
sible. That young lady looks seventeen 
or eighteen years of age.”’ 

Yes;> but it: is! Ruperta. 
nobody like her. Papa!’’ 

Se Welty’ 

““T suppose I may speak to her now.’’ 

“What for ? ”’ 

‘“She is so beautiful.’’ 

“That she really is. 


There’s 


And therefore I 


THMPTATION. 181 
advise you to have nothing to say to her, 
You are not children now, you know. 
Were you to renew that intimacy, you 
might be tempted to fall in love with her. 
I don’t say you would be so mad, for you 
are a Sensible boy; but still, after that 
little business in the wood—’’ 

‘But suppose I did fall in love with 
her? 7 

“Then that would be a great misfort- 
une. Don’t you know that her father is 
my enemy? If you were to make any 
advances to that young lady, he would 
seize the opportunity to affront you, and 
me through you.”’ 

This silenced Compton, for he was an 
obedient youth. 

But in the evening he got to his mother 
and coaxed her to take his part. 

Now Lady Bassett felt the truth of all 
her husband had said; but she had a 
positive wish the young people should be 
on friendly terms, at all events; she 
wanted the family feud to die with the 
generation it had afflicted. She prom- 
ised, therefore, to speak to Sir Charles ; 
and so great was her influence that she 
actually obtained terms for Compton: 
he might speak to Miss Bassett, if he 
would realize the whole situation, and be 
very discreet, and not revive that absurd 
familiarity into which their childhood had 
been betrayed. 

She communicated this to him, and 
warned him at the same time that even 
this concession had been granted some- 
what reluctantly, and in consideration of 
his invariable good conduct; it would be 
immediately withdrawn upon the slightest 
indiscretion. | 

‘Oh, I will be discretion itself,’’ said 
Compton; but the warmth with which 
he kissed his mother gave her some 
doubts. However, she was prepared to 
risk something. She had her own views 
in this matter. 

When he had got this limited permis- 
sion, Master Compton was not much 
nearer the mark; for he was- not to 
call on the young lady, and she did not 
often walk in the village. 

But he often thought of her, her loving, 
sprightly ways seven years ago, and the 


182. 


blaze of beauty with which she had re- | 
turned. 

At last, one Sunday afternoon, she 
came to church alone. When the con- 
gregation dispersed, he followed her, and 
came up with her, but his heart beat 
violently. 

‘‘Miss Bassett!’ said he, timidly. 

She stopped, and turned her eyes on 
him; he blushed up to the temples. She 
blushed too, but not quite so much. 

‘‘Tam afraid you don’t remember me,’’ 
said the boy, sadly. 

‘Yes, Ido, sir,” said Ruperta, shyly. 

‘¢ How you are grown! ” 

SOMES SITs” 

- “You are taller than lam, and more 
beautiful than ever.’’ 

No answer, but a blush. 

‘You are not angry with me for speak- 
ing to you?’’ 

‘INO VSIte 

‘‘T wouldn’t offend you.”’ 

“Tam not offended. Only—”’ 

‘‘Oh, Miss Bassett, of course I know 
you will never be—we shall never be— 
like we used.’’ 

A very deep blush, and dead silence. 

«You are a grown-up young lady, and 
I am only a boy still, somehow. But it 
would have been hard if I might not even 
speak to you. Would it not?’ 

*“Yes,’’ said the young lady, but after 
some hesitation, and only in a whisper. 

«<T wonder where you walk to. I have 
never seen you out but once.”’ 

No reply to this little feeler. 

Then, at last, Compton was dis- 
couraged, partly by her beauty and size, 
partly by her taciturnity. 

, He was silent in return, and so, in a 
state of mutual constraint, they reached 
the gate of Highmore. 

‘ Good-by,’’ said Compton reluctantly. 

“ Good-by.”’ 

“Won't you shake hands ?”’ 

She blushed, and put out her hand half- 
way. He took it and shook it, and so 
they parted. 

Compton said to his mother disconso- 
lately, ‘“‘Mamma, itis all over. I have 
seen her, and spoken to her; but she has 
gone off dreadfully.’’ 


-| time. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


‘Why, what is the matter?” — 

“She is all changed: She is so stupid 
and dignified got to be. She has nota 
word to say to a fellow.”’ 

‘‘ Perhaps she is more reserved ; that is 
natural. She is a young lady now.” 

‘Then it isa great pity she did not stay 
as she was. Oh, the bright little darling! 
Who’d think she could ever turn into a 
great, stupid, dignified thing? She is as 
tall as you, mamma.”’ 

‘Indeed! She has made use of her 
Well, dear, don’t take too much 
notice of her, and then you will find she 
will not be nearly so shy.”’ 

‘*'Too much notice! Ishall never speak 
to her again—perhaps.”’ 

“‘T would not be violent, one way or the 
other. Why not treat her like any other 
acquaintance ?”’ 

Next Sunday afternoon she came to 
church alone. 

In spite of his resolution, Mr. Compton 
tried her a second time. Horror! she 
was all monosyllables and blushes again. 

Compton began to find it too up-hill. 
At last, when they reached Highmore 
gate, he lost his patience, and said, “I 
see how it is. I have lost my sweet 
playmate forever. Good-by, Ruperta ; 
I won’t trouble you any more.’’ And he 
held out his hand to the young lady for 
a final farewell. 

Ruperta whipped both her hands behind 
her back like a school-girl, «and then, re- 
covering her dignity, cast one swift glance 
of gentle reproach, then suddenly assum- 
ing vast stateliness, marched into High- 
more like the mother of a family. These 
three changes of manner she effected all 
in less than two seconds. 

Poor Compton went away sorely puz- 
zled by this female kaleidoscope, but not 
a little alarmed and concerned at having 
mortally offended so much feminine dig- 
nity. 

After that he did not venture to accost 
her for some time, but he cast a few 
sheep’s-eyes at her in church. — 

Now Ruperta had told her mother all ; 
and her mother had not forbidden her to 
speak to Compton, but had insisted on 
reserve and discretion. ‘ 


A THRRIBLE 


She now told her mother she thought 
he would not speak to her any more, she 
had snubbed him so. 

‘‘Dear me!’’ said Mrs. Bassett, ‘‘ why 
did you do that? Can you not be polite 
and nothing more? ’”’ 

‘“No, mamma.’’ 


‘Why not? He is very amiable. 
Everybody says so.”’ 
“He is. But I keep remembering 


what a forward girl I was, and I am 
afraid he has not forgotten it either, 
and that makes me hate the poor little 
fellow; no, not hate him; but keep him 
off. 
tempered thing; and I am very unkind 
to him, but I can’t help it.’’ 

‘‘Never mind,’”’ said Mrs. Bassett ; 

“that is much better than to be too 
forward. Papa would never forgive 
that.’’ 
_By-and-by there was a cricket-match 
in the farmer’s meadow, Highcombe and 
Huntercombe eleven against the town of 
Staveleigh. All clubs liked to play at 
Huntercombe, because Sir Charles found 
the tents and the dinner, and the young 
farmers drank his champagne to their 
hearts’ content. 

Ruperta took her maid and went to 
see the match. They found it going 
against Huntercombe. The score as 
follows— 

Staveleigh. First innings, a hundred 
and forty-eight runs. 

Huntercombe eighty-eight. 

Staveleigh. Second innings, sixty runs, 
and only one wicket down; and Johnson 
and Wright, two of their best men, well 
in, and masters of the bowling. 

This being communicated to Ruperta, 
she became excited, and her soul in the 
game. 

The batters went on knocking the balls 
about, and scored thirteen more before 
the young lady’s eyes. 

“Oh, dear!’ said she, ‘‘ what is that 
boy about? Why doesn’t he bowl? 
They pretend he is a capital bowler.”’ 

At this time Compton was standing 
long-field on, only farther from the 
wicket than usual. 

Johnson, at the wicket bowled to, be- 


I dare say he thinks me a cross, ill-* 


TEMPTATION. 183 
ing a hard but not very scientific hitter, 
lifted a half volley ball right over the 
bowler’s head, a hit for four, but a sky- 


scraper. Compton started the moment 
he hit, and, running with prodigious 
velocity, caught the ball descending, 


within a few yards of Ruperta; but, to 
get at it, he was obliged to throw him- 
self forward into the air; he rolled upon 
the grass, but held the ball in sight all 
the while. 

Mr. Johnson was out, and loud accla- 
mations rent the sky. 

Compton rose, and saw Ruperta clap- 
ping her hands close by. 

She left off and blushed, directly he saw 
her. He blushed too, and touched his cap 
to her, with an air half manly, half sheep- 
ish, but did not speak to her. 

This was the last ball of the over, and, 
as the ball was now to be delivered from 
the other wicket, Compton took the place 
of long-leg. 
~ The third ball was overpitched to leg, 
and Wright, who, like. most country 
players, hit freely to leg, turned half, 
and caught this ball exactly right, and 
sent it whizzing for five. 

But the very force of the stroke was 
fatal to him; the ball went at first bound 
right into Compton’s hands, who _ in- 
stantly flung it back, like a catapult, at 
Wright’s wicket. 

Wright, having hit for five, and being 
unable to see what had become of the 
ball, started to run, aS a matter of 
course. 

But the other batsman, seeing the ball 
go right into long-leg’s hands like a bul- 
let, cried, ‘‘ Back! ”’ 

Wright turned, and would have got 
back to his wicket if the ball had re- 
quired handling by the wicket-keeper ; 
but, by a mixture of skill with luck, it 
came right at the wicket. Seeing which, 
the wicket-keeper very judiciously let it 
alone, and it carried off the bails just half 
a second before Mr. Wright grounded 
his bat. 

‘‘How’s that, 
wicket-keeper. 

““Out!’’ said the Staveleigh CRN: 
who judged at that end. 


umpire?’’ cried the 


184 

Up went the ball into the air, amid 
great excitement of the natives. 

Ruperta, carried away by the general 
enthusiasm, nodded all sparkling to 
Compton, and that made his heart beat 
and his soul aspire. So next over he 
claimed his rights, and took the ball. 
Luck still befriended him: he bowled 
four wickets in twelve overs; the wicket- 
keeper stumped a fifth: the rest were 
‘the tail,’? and disposed of for a few 
runs, and the total was no more than 
Huntercombe’s first innings. 

Our hero then took the bat, and made 
forty-seven runs before he was disposed 
of, five wickets down for a hundred and 
ten runs. The match was not won yet, 
nor sure to be; but the situation was re- 
versed. : . 

On going out, he was loudly applauded ; 
and Ruperta naturally felt proud of her 
admirer. 

Being now free, he came to her irreso- 
lutely with some iced. champagne. 

Ruperta declined, with thanks; but he 
looked so imploringly that she sipped a 
little, and said, warmly, ‘‘ ] hope we shall 
win: and, if we do, I know whom we 
shall have to thank.”’ 

‘* And so do I: you, Miss Bassett.”’ 

‘“¢Me? Why, what have J done in the 
matter ? ”’ 

“You brought us luck, for one thing. 
You put us on our mettle. Staveleigh 
shall never beat me, with you looking on.”’ 

Ruperta blushed a little, for the boy’s 
eyes beamed with fire. 

‘If I believed that,’’? said she, ‘I 
should hire myself out at the next 
match, and charge twelve pairs of 
gloves.”’ 

“You may believe it, then; ask any- 
body whether our luck did not change 
the moment you came.”’ 

“Then I am afraid it will go now, for I 
am going.”’ 

“You will lose us the match if you 
do,’ said Compton. 

“T can’t help it: now you are out, it is 
rather insipid. There, you see I can pay 
compliments as well as you.”’ 

Then she made a graceful inclination 
and moved away. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


Compton felt his heart ache at parting. 
He took a thought and ran quickly to a 
certain part of the field. 

Ruperta and her attendant walked very 
slowly homeward. 

Compton caught them just at their 
own gate. ‘‘Cousin!’’ said he, implor- 
ingly, and held her out a nosegay of cow- 
slips only. | 

At that the memories rushed back on 
her, and the girl seemed literally to melt. 
She gave him one look full of womanly 
sensibility and winning tenderness, and 
said, softly, ‘‘ Thank you, cousin.”’ 

Compton went away on wing's: the ice 
was broken. 

But the next time he met her it had 
frozen again apparently: to be sure she 
was alone; and young ladies will be 
bolder when they have another person 
of their own sex with them. 


Mr. Angelo called on Sir Charles Bas- 
sett to complain of a serious grievance. 

Mr. Angelo had become zealous and 
eloquent, but what are eloquence and zeal 
against sex? A handsome woman had 
preached for ten minutes upon a little 
mound outside the village, and had an- 
nounced she should say a few parting 
words next Sunday evening at six 
o'clock. 

Mr. Angelo complained of this to Lady 
Bassett. 

Lady Bassett referred 
Charles. 

Mr. Angelo asked that magistrate to 
enforce the law against conventicles. 

Sir Charles said he thought the Act did 
not apply. _ 

“Well, but,’? said Angelo, ‘it is on 
your ground she is going to preach.’’ 

«©T am the proprietor, but the tenant is 
the owner in law. He could warn me off 
his ground. Ihave no power.”’ 

‘‘] fear you have no inclination,”’ said 
Angelo, nettled. 

‘Not much, to tell the truth,’’ replied 
Sir Charles coolly. <‘‘Does it matter so 
very much who sows the good seed, or 
whether it is flung abroad from a pulpit 
or a grassy knoll ? ”’ 

‘That is begging the question, Sir 


him to Sir 


A TERRIBLE 


Charles. Why assume that it is good 
seed ? it is more likely to be tares than 
wheat in this case.”’ 

‘«« And is not that begging the question? 
Well, I will make it my business to know: 
and if she preaches sedition, or heresy, 
or bad morals, I will strain my power a 
little to silence her. More than that I 
really cannot promise you. The day is 
gone by for intolerance.”’ 

‘‘ Intolerance is a bad thing; but the 
absence of all conviction is worse, and 
that is what we are coming to.”’ 

“Not quite that: but the nation has 
tasted liberty ; and now every man as- 
sumes to do what is right in his own 
eyes.”’ 

“That mean’s what is wrong in his 
neighbor’s.”’ 

Sir Charles thought this neat, and 
laughed good-humoredly : he asked the 
rector to dine on Sunday at half-past 
seven. ‘‘I shall know more about it 
by that time,”’ said he. 

They dined early on Sunday, at High- 
more, and Ruperta took her maid for a 
walk in the afternoon, and came back in 
time to hear the female preacher. 

Half the village was there already, and 
presently the preacher walked to her 
station. 

To Ruperta’s surprise, she was a lady, 
richly dressed, tall and handsome, but 
with features rather too commanding. 
She had a glove on her left hand, and a 
little Bible in her right hand, which was 
large, but white, and finely formed. 

She delivered a short prayer, and opened 
Her text: 

‘Walk honestly; not in strife and 
envying.”’ 

Just as the text was given out, Ru- 
perta’s maid pinched her, and the young 
lady, looking up, saw her father coming 
to see what was the matter. Maid was 
for hiding, but Ruperta made a wry face, 
blushed, and stood her ground. ‘‘ How 
can he scold me, when he comes himself?”’ 
she whispered. 

During the sermon, of which, short as 
it was, | can only afford to give the out- 
line, in crept Compton Bassett, and got 
within three or four of Ruperta. 


TEMPTATION. 185 

Finally Sir Charles Bassett came up, 
in accordance with his promise to An- 
gelo. 

The perfect preacher deals in generali- 
ties, but strikes them home with a few 
personalities. 

Most clerical preachers deal only in 
generalities, and that is ineffective, espe- 
cially to uncultivated minds. 

Mrs. Marsh, as might be expected from 
her sex, went a little too much the other 
way. 

After a few sensible words, pointing 
out the misery in houses, and the harm 
done to the soul, by a quarrelsome spirit, 
She lamented there was too much of it 
in Huntercombe: with this opening she 
went into personalities: reminded them 
of the fight between two farm servants 
last week, one of whom was laid up at 
that moment in consequence. ‘* And,”’ 
said she, ‘‘even when it does not come to 
fighting, it poisons your lives and offends 
your Redeemer.’’ 

Then she went into the causes, and she 
said Drunkenness and Detraction were 
the chief causes of strife and conten- 
tion. : 

She dealt briefly but dramatically with 


-Drunkenness, and then lashed Detrac- 


tion, as follows: 

‘‘Eivery class has its vices, and De- 
traction is the vice of the poor. You 
are ever so much vainer than your bet- 
ters: you are eaten up with vanity, and 
never give your neighbor a good word. I 


‘have been in thirty houses, and in not one 


of those houses has any poor man or poor 
woman spoken one honest word in praise 
of a neighbor. So do not flatter your- 
selves this is a Christian village, for it is 
not. The only excuse to be made for 
you, and I fear it is not one that God 
will accept on His judgment-day, is that 
your betters set you a bad example in- 
stead of a good one. The two principal 
people in this village are kinsfolk, yet 
enemies, and have been enemies for 
twenty years. That’s a nice example 
for two Christian gentlemen to set to 
poor people, who, they may be sure, will 
copy their sins, if they copy nothing 
else: 


186 


‘«‘They go to church regularly, and be- 
lieve in the Bible, and yet they defy both 
Church and Bible. 

‘* Now I should like to ask those gen- 
tlemen a question. How do they mean 
to manage in Heaven? When the bar- 
onet comes to that happy place, where 
all is love, will the squire walk out? Or 
do they think to quarrel there, and so 
get turned out, both of them? I don’t 
wonder at your smiling; but it is a seri- 
ous consideration, for all that. The soul 
of man is immortal: and what is the 
soul? it is not a substantial thing, like 
the body ; itis a bundle of thoughts and 
feelings: the thoughts we die with in 
this world, we shall wake up with them 
in the next. Yet here are two Chris- 
tians loading their immortal souls with 
immortal hate. What a waste of feel- 
ing, if it must all be flung off together 
with the body, lest it drag the souls of 
both down to bottomless perdition. 

‘‘And what do they gain in this 
world ?—irritation, ill-health, and misery. 
Itisa fact that no man ever reached a 
great old age who hated his neighbor ; 
still less a good old age; for, if men 
would look honestly into their own 
hearts, they would own that to hate is 
to be miserable. 

‘IT believe no men commit a sin for 
many years without some special warn- 
ings; and to neglect these, is one sin 
more added to their account. Such a 
warning, or rather, I should say, such a 
pleading of Divine love, those two gen- 
tlemen have had. Do you remember, 
about eight years ago, two children were 
lost on one day, out of different houses 
in this village?’’ (A murmur from thé 
crowd.) 

“Perhaps some of you here present 
were instrumental, under God, in find- 
ing that pretty pair.’\ (A louder mur- 
mur.) 

“Oh, don’t be afraid to answer me. 
Preaching is only a way of speaking ; 
and I’m only a woman that is speaking 
to youfor your good. Tell me—we are 
not in church, tied up by stait-laced rules 
to keep men and women from getting 
within arm’s-length of one another’s 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


souls—tell me, who saw those two lost 
children ? ”’ 

“‘T, I, I, I, 1,” roared several voices in 
reply. 

‘“‘Is it true, as a good woman tells me, 
that the innocent darlings had each an 
arm round the other’s neck ?”’ 

‘Ave 

*“ And little coronets of flowers, to 
match their hair? ’”’ (That was the girl’s 
doing.) 

6é Agere 

‘‘And the little boy had played the 
man, and taken off his tippet to put 
round the little lady ? ”’ 

“Ay!” with a burst of enthusiasm 
from the assembled rustics. 

‘‘T think I see them myself; and the 
torches lighting up the dewy leaves over- 
head, and that Divine picture’ of inno- 
cent love. Well, which was the prettiest 
sight, and the fittest for heaven—the 
hatred of the parents, or the affection 
of the children ? 

‘* And now mark what a weapon hatred 
is, in the Devil’s hands. There are only 
two people in this parish on whom that 
sight was wasted; and those two, being 
gentlemen, and men of education, would 
have been more affected by it than hum- 
ble folk, if Hell had not been in their 
hearts, for Hate comes from Hell, and 
takes men down to the place it comes 
from. 

‘*Do you, then, shun, in that one thing, 
the example of your betters: and I hope 
those children will shun it too. <A father 
is to be treated with great veneration, 
but above all is our Heavenly Father 
and His law; and that law, what is it >— 
what has it been this eighteen hundred 
years and more? Why, Love. 

“Would you be happy in this world, 
and fit your souls to dwell hereafter even 
in the meanest of the many mansions 
prepared above, you must, above all 
things, be charitable. You must not run 
your neighbor down behind his back, or 
God will hate you: you must not wound 
him to his face, or God will hate you. 
You must overlook a fault or two, and 
see a man’s bright side, and then God 
will love you. If you won’t do that much 


A TERRIBLE 


for your neighbor, why, in Heaven’s 
name, should God overlook a multitude 
of sins in you? 

‘“‘Nothing goes to heaven surer than 
Charity, and nothing is so fit to sit in 
heaven. St. Paul had many things to be 
proud of and to praise in himself—things 
that the world is more apt to admire 
than Christian charity, the sweetest, but 
humblest of all the Christian graces: St. 
Paul, I say, was a bulwark of learning, 
an anchor of faith, a rock of constancy, a 
thunder-bolt of zeal: yet see how he be- 
stows the palin. 

““*« Knowledge puffeth up: but charity 
edifieth. Though I speak with the tongues 
of men and of angels, and have not char- 
itv, lam become as sounding brass, or a 
tinkling cymbal. And though I have the 
gift of prophecy, and understand all mys- 
teries and all knowledge; and though I 
have all faith, so that I could remove 
mountains, and have not charity, 1 am 
nothing. And though I bestow all my 
goods to feed the poor, and though I give 
my body to be burned, and have not char- 
ity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suf- 
fereth long, and is kind ; charity envieth 
not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not 
puffed up, doth not behave itself unseem- 
ly, seeketh not her own, is not easily pro- 
voked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in 
iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; bear- 
eth all things, believeth all things, hopeth 
all things, endureth all things. Charity 
never faileth; but prophecies—they shall 
fail; tongues—they shall cease; knowl- 
edge—it shall vanish away. And now 
abideth Faith, Hope, Charity, these 
three; but the greatest of these is char- 
ity.’ 99 

The fair orator delivered these words 
with such fire, such feeling, such trum- 
pet tones and heartfelt eloquence, that 
for the first time those immortal words 
sounded in these village ears true oracles 
of God. 

Then, without pause, she went on, ‘‘So 
let us lift our hearts in earnest prayer to 
God that, in this world of thorns, and 
tempers, and trials, and troubles, and 
cares, He will give us the best cure for 
all—the great sweetener of this mortal 


ime: 


TEMPTATION. 187 
life—the sure forerunner of Heaven—His 
most excellent gift of charity.”’ Then, in 
one generous burst, she prayed for love 
divine, and there was many a sigh and 
many a tear,and at the close an ‘“‘Amen!”’ 
such as, alas! we shall never, I fear, hear 
burst from a hundred bosoms where men 
repeat beautiful but stale words and call 
it prayer. 

The preacher retired, but the people 
still hngered spell-bound, and then arose 
that buzz which shows that the words 
have gone home. 

As for Richard Bassett, he had turned 
on his heel, indignant, as soon as the 
preacher’s admonitions came his way. 

Sir Charles Bassett stood his ground 
rather longer, being steeled by the con- 
viction that the quarrel was none of his 
seeking. Moreover, he was not aware 
what a good friend this woman had been 
to him, nor what.a good wife she had 
been to Marsh this seventeen years. His 
mind, therefore, made a clear leap from 
Rhoda Somerset, the vixen of Hyde 
Park and Mayfair, to this preacher, and 
he could not help smiling; than which a 
worse frame for receiving unpalatable 
truths can hardly be conceived. And so 
the elders were obdurate. But Comp- 
ton and Ruperta had no armor of old 
age, egotism, or prejudice to turn the 
darts of honest eloquence. They listened, 
as to the voice of an angel; they gazed, 
as on the face of an angel; and when 
those silvery accents ceased, they turned 
toward each other and came toward each 
other, with the sweet enthusiasm that 
became their years. ‘Oh, Cousin Ru- 
perta !”’ quavered Compton. ‘“‘ Oh, 
Cousin Compton!’ cried Ruperta, the 
tears trickling down her lovely cheeks. 

They could not say any more for ever 
so long. 

Ruperta spoke first. She gave a final 
gulp, and said, ‘‘I will go and speak to 
her, and thank her.’’ 

“Oh, Miss Ruperta, we shall be too 
late for tea,’’ suggested the maid. 

“Tea !?? said Ruperta. ‘Our souls 
are before our tea! JI must speak to her, 
or else my heart will choke me and kill 
I will go—and so will Compton.’’ 


188 


“Oh, yes!’’ said Compton. 

And they hurried after the preacher. 

They came up with her flushed and 
panting; and now it was Compton’s turn 
to be shy—the lady was so tall and 
stately too. 

But Ruperta was not much afraid of 
anything in petticoats. ‘‘Oh, madam,’’ 
said she, ‘‘if you please, may we speak to 
you? ”’ | 

Mrs. Marsh turned round, and her some- 
what aquiline features softened instantly 
at the two specimens of beauty and inno- 
cence that had run after her. 

“ Certainly, my young friends; ’’ and 
she smiled maternally on them. She had 
children of her own. 

‘Who do you think we are? Weare 
the two naughty children you preached 
about so beautifully.’’ 

‘What! you the babes in the wood ?”’ 

“Yes, madam. It was a long, long 
while ago, and we are fifteen now—are 
we not, Cousin Compton ?”’ 

eVies. maaan: 

“And we are both so unhappy at our 
parents’ quarreling. At least I am.”’’ 

«And so am I.” 

“¢ And we came to thank you. 
we, Compton ? ” 

‘<-Yes, Ruperta.”’ 

‘«¢ And to ask your advice. How are we 
to make our parents be friends? Old 
people will not be advised by young ones. 
They look down on us so; it is dreadful.” 

‘‘My dear young lady,” said Mrs. 
Marsh, ‘‘I will try and answer you: but 
let me sit down a minute; for, after 
preaching, I am apt to feel a little ex- 
hausted. Now, sit beside me, and give 
me each a hand, if you please. 

‘* Well, my dears, I have been teaching 
you a lesson; and now you teach me one, 
and thatis, how much easier it is to preach 
reconciliation and charity than it is to 
practice it under certain circumstances. 
However, my advice to you isfirst to pray 
to God for wisdom in this thing, and then 
to watch every opportunity. Dissuade 
vour parents from every unkind act: 
don’t be afraid to speak—with the word 
of God at your back. I know that you 
have no easy task before you. Sir Charles 


bs 


Didn’t 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


Bassett and Mr. Bassett were both among 
my hearers, and both turned their backs 
on me, and went away unsoftened ; they 
would not give mea chance; would not 
hear me to an end, and lam not a wordy 
preacher neither.”’ 

Here an interruption occurred. Ru- 
perta, so shy and cold with Compton, 
flung her arms round Mrs. Marsh’s neck, 
with the tears in her eyes, and kissed her 
eagerly. 

“Yes, my. dear,’ said einem Marsh, 
after kissing her in turn, ‘‘ I was a little 
mortified. But that was very weak and 
foolish. Iam sorry, for their own sakes, 
they would not stay; it was the word of 
God: but they saw only the unworthy 
instrument. Well, then, my dears, you 
have a hard task; but you must work 
upon your mothers, and win. them to 
charity.”’ 

“Ah! that will be easy enough. My 
mother has never approved this unhappy 


quarrel.”’ 
‘“No more has mine.”’ 
‘Is itso? Then you must try and get 


the two ladies to speak to each other. 
But something tells me that a way will 
be opened. Have patience; have faith; 
and do not mind a check or two; but 
persevere, remembering that ‘ blessed 
are the peace-makers.’ ”’ 

She then rose, and they took leave of 
Her, ; 

‘*Give me a kiss, children,’’ said she. 
“You have done me a world of good. 
My own heart often flags on the road, 
and you have warmed and comforted it. 
God bless you!”’ 

And so they parted. 

Compton and Ruperta walked home- 
ward. Ruperta was very thoughtful, 
and Compton could only get monosyl- 
lables out of her. This discouraged, 
and at last vexed him. 

«What have I done,’’ said he, ‘‘ that 
you will speak to anybody but me ? ’’ 

‘“Don’t. be cross, childs’? said she; 
‘but answer me a question. Did you 
put your tippet round me in that wood ?”’ 

*“T suppose so.”’ 

‘Oh, then you don’t remember: doing | 
it, eh? ’’ 


b] 


A THRRIBLEH 


*“No; that I don’t.’’ 

“Then what makes you think you 
did ? ”’ 

‘* Because they say So. 
must have been such an awful cad if 
1 didn’t. And I-was always much 
fonder of you than you were of me. 
My tippet! I’d give my head sooner 
than any harm should come to you, 
Ruperta ! ”’ } 

Ruperta made no reply, but, being now 
at Highmore, she put out her hand to 
him, and turned her head away. He 
kissed her hand devotedly, and so they 
parted. 

Compton told Lady Bassett all that 
happened, and Ruperta told Mrs. Bas- 
sett. 

Those ladies readily promised to be 
on the side of peace, but they feared it 
could only be the work of time, and 
said so. 

By-and-by Compton got impatient, and 
told Ruperta he had thought of a way to 
compel their fathers to be friends. ‘I 
am afraid you won’t like the idea at 
Wiest, saldmne << bub) (the: more syou 
think of it, the more you will see it is 
the surest way of all.’ 

“Well, but what is it ? ”’ 

“* You must let me marry you.”’ 

Ruperta stared, and began to blush 
crimson. 

‘‘ Will you, cousin ? ”’ 

‘“¢Of course not, child.. The idea ! ”’ 

“Oh, Ruperta,’’ cried the boy in dis- 
may, ‘“‘surely you don’t mean to marry 
anybody else but me !”’ 

‘‘Would that make you very unhappy, 
then ? ” 

“You know it would, wretched for my 
life.”’ 

‘‘T should not like to do that. But I 
disapprove of early marriages. I mean 
to wait till ’m nineteen; and that is 
three years nearly.’’ 

“‘It is a fearful time; but if you will 
promise not to marry anybody else, I 
suppose I shall live through it.’’ 

Ruperta, though she made light of 
Compton’s offer, was very proud of it 
(it was her first). She told her mother 
directly. 


Because I 


TEMPTATION. 189 

Mrs. Bassett sighed, and said that was 
too blessed a thing ever to happen. 

““Why not?’ said Ruperta. 

‘‘How could it,’’ said Mrs. Bassett, 
‘‘with everybody against it but poor 
little me !’’ 

‘‘Compton assures me that Lady Bas- 
sett wishes it.”’ 

‘‘Indeed! But Sir Charles and papa, 
Ruperta ? ”’ 

‘“*Oh, Compton must talk Sir Charles 
over, and I will persuade papa. I'll be- 
gin this evening, when he comes home 
from London.”’ 

Accordingly, as he was sitting alone 
in the dining-room sipping his glass of 
port, Ruperta slipped away from her 
mother’s side and found him. 

His face brightened at the sight of 
her; for he was extremely fond and 
proud of this girl, for whom he would 
not have the bells rung when she was 
born. 

She came and hung round his neck a 
little, and kissed him, and said softly, 
‘“‘Dear papa, I have something to tell 
you. I have had a proposal.”’ . 

Richard Bassett stared. 

‘“‘ What, of marriage ? ”’ 

Ruperta nodded archly. 

“To a child like you? Scandalous! 
No, for, after all, you look nineteen or 
twenty. And who is the’ highwayman 
that thinks to rob me of my precious 
Siriaas 

‘“‘ Well, papa, whoever he is, he will 
have to wait three years, and so I told 
him. It is my cousin Compton.”’’ 

‘““What!’’ cried Richard Bassett,.so 
loudly that the girl started’ back dis- 
mayed. ‘*‘That little monkey have the 
impudence to offer marriage to my 
daughter? Surely, Ruperta, you have 
offered him no encouragement ? ”’ 

‘* N—no.”’ 

‘“Your mother promised me nothing 
but common civility should pass between 


you and that young gentleman.” 


‘‘She promised for me, but she could 
not promise for him— poor little fel- 
low !”? 

‘“‘Marry a son of the man who has 
robbed and insulted your father ! ”’ 


190 


‘*Oh, papa! is it so? Are you sure 
you did not begin? ”’ 

‘Tf you can think that, it is useless to 
say more. I thought ill-fortune had done 
its worst; but no; blow upon blow, and 
wound upon wound. Don’t spare me, 
child. Nobody else has, and why should 
you? Marry my enemy’s son, his 
younger son, and break your father’s 
heart.”’ 

At this, what could a sensitive girl of 
sixteen do but burst out crying, and 
promise, round her father’s neck, never 
to marry any one whom he disliked. 

When she had made this promise, her 
father fondled and petted her, and his 
tenderness consoled her, for she was not 
passionately in love with her cousin. 

Yet she cried a good deal over the let- 
ter in which she communicated this to 
Compton. 

He lay in wait for her; but she baffled 
him for three weeks. 

After that she relaxed her vigilance, 
for she had no real wish to avoid him, 
and was curious to see whether she had 
cured him. 

He met her; and his conduct took her 
by surprise. He was pale, and looked 
very wretched. 

He said solemnly, ‘‘ Were you jesting 
with me when you promised to marry 
no one but me?”’ 

‘“No, Compton. But you know I 
could never marry you without papa’s 
consent.”’ : 

““Of course not; but, what I fear, he 
might wish you to marry somebody 
else.”’ 

“Then I should refuse. I will never 
break my word to you, cousin. I am 
not in love with you, you are too young 
for that—but somehow I feel I could not 
make you unhappy. Can’t you trust my 
word? You might. I come of the same 
people as you. Why do you look so pale? 
—we are very unhappy.”’ 

Then the tears began to steal down her’ 
cheeks ; and Compton’s soon followed. 

Compton consulted his mother. She 
told him, with a sigh, she was powerless. 
Sir Charles might yield to her, but she 
had no power to influence Mr. Bassett at 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


99 


present. ‘‘ The time may come,”’ said 
she. She could not take a very serious 
view of this amour, except with regard 
to its pacific results. So Mr. Bassett’s 
opposition chilled her in the matter. 

While things were so, something oc- 
curred that drove all these minor things — 
out of her distracted heart. 

One summer evening, as she and Sir 
Charles and Compton sat at dinner, a 
servant came in to say there was a 
stranger at the door, and he called him- 
self Bassett. 3 

‘‘ What is he like ?’”’ said Lady Bassett, 
turning pale. 3 

‘‘He looks like a foreigner, my lady. 
He says he is Mr. Bassett,’’? repeated the 
man, with a scandalized air. 

Sir Charles got up directly, and hur- 
ried to the hall door. Compton followed 
to the door only and looked. 

Sure enough it was Reginald, full- 
grown, and bold, as handsome as ever, 
and darker than ever. 

In that moment his misconduct in run- 
ning away never occurred either to Sir 
Charles or Compton; all was eager and 
tremulous welcome. The hall rang with 
joy. They almost carried him into the 
dining-room. 

The first thing they saw was a train of 
violet-colored velvet, half hidden by the 
table. 

Compton ran forward with a cry of 
dismay. 

It was Lady Bassett, in a dead swoon, 
her face as white as her neck and arms, 
and these as white and smooth as Satin. 


CHAPTER XLII. 


LaDy BASSETT was carried to her room, 
and did not reappear. She kept her own 
apartments, and her health declined so 
rapidly that Sir Charles sent for Dr. 
Willis. He prescribed for the body, but 
the disease lay in the mind. Martyr to 
an inward struggle, she pined visibly, 


A THRRIBLE 


and her beautiful eyes began to shine 
like stars, preternaturally large. She 
was ina frightful condition: she longed 
to tell the truth and end it all; but then 
she must lose her adored husband’s re- 
spect, and perhaps his love; and she had 
not the courage. She saw no way out of 
it but to die and leave her confession ; 
and, as she felt that the agony of her 
soul was killing her by degrees, she drew 
a somber resignation from that. 

She declined to see Reginald. 
could not bear the sight of him. 

Compton came to her many times a 
day, with a face full of concern, and even 
terror. But she would not talk to him of 
herself. 

He brought her all the news he heard, 
having no other way to cheer her. 

One day he told her there were rob- 
bers about. Two farmhouses had been 
robbed, a thing not known in these parts 
for many years. 

Lady Bassett shuddered, but said noth- 
ing. 

But by-and-by her beloved son came to 
her in distress with a grief of his own. 

Ruperta Bassett was now the beauty 
of the county, and it seems Mr. Rutland 
had danced with her at her first ball, and 
been violently smitten with her; he had 


called more than once at Highmore, and 


his attentions were directly encouraged 
by Mr. Bassett. Now Mr. Rutland was 
heir to a peerage, and also to consider- 
able estates in the county. 

Compton was sick at heart, and, being 
young, saw his life about to be blighted ; 
so now he was pale and woe-begone, and 
told her the sad news with such deep 
sighs, and imploring, tearful eyes, that 
all the mother rose in arms. ‘“Ah!”’ 
said she, ‘‘they say to themselves that I 
am down, and cannot fight for my child ; 
but I would fight for him on the edge of 
the grave. Let me think all by myself, 
dear. Come back to me in an hour. I 
shall do something. Your mother is a 
very cunning woman—for those she 
loves.”’ 

Compton kissed her gown—a favorite 
action of his, for he worshiped her—and 
went away. 


She. 


TEMPTATION. 191 

The invalid laid her hollow cheek upon 
her wasted hand, and thought with all 
her might. By degrees her extraordi- 
nary brain developed a twofold plan of 
action ; and she proceeded to execute the 
first part, being the least difficult, though 
even that was not easy, and brought a 
vivid blush to her wasted cheek. 

She wrote to Mrs. Bassett. 


‘*MADAM—I am very ill, and life is un- 
certain. Something tells me you, like me, 
regret the unhappy feud between our 
houses. If this is so, it would be a con- 
solation to me to take you by the hand — 
and exchange a few words, as we already 
have a few kind looks. 

** Yours respectfully, 
‘* BELLA BASSETT.”’ 


She showed this letter to Compton, and 
told him he might send a servant with it 
to Highmore at once. 

“Oh, mamma!’ said he, ‘I:never 
thought you would do that: how good 
you are! You couldn’t ask Ruperta, 
could you? Just in a little postscript, 
you know.”’ | 

Lady Bassett shook her head. 

‘‘That would not be wise, my dear. 
Let me hook that fish for you, not 
frighten her away.”’ 

Great was the astonishment at High- 
more when a blazing footman knocked at 
the door and handed Jessie the letter with 
assumed nonchalance, then stalked away, 
concealing with professional art his own 
astonishment at what he had done. 

It was no business of Jessie’s to take 
letters into the drawing-room ; she would 
have deposited any other letter on the 
hall table; but she brought this one in, 
and, standing at the door, exclaimed, 
‘‘ Here a letter fr’ Huntercombe !”’ 

Richard ‘Bassett, Mrs. Bassett, and 
Ruperta, all turned upon her with one 
accord. 

“From where? ”’ 

‘Fr’ Huntercombe itsel’. 
you, nor for you, missy. 
mesterress.”’ 

She marched proudly up to Mrs. Bas- 
sett and laid the letter down on the 


Et isna for 
Et’s for the 


192 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


table; then drew back a step or two, | She is a lady, a real lady, every inch. 


and, being Scotch, coolly waited to hear 
the contents. Richard Bassett, being 
English, told her she need not stay. 

Mrs. Bassett cast a bewildered look at 
her husband and daughter, then opened 
the letter quietly ; read it quietly ; and, 
having read it, took out her handkerchief 
and began to cry quietly. 


Ruperta cried, ‘‘ Oh, mamma !’’ and in- 


a moment had one long arm round her 
mother’s neck, while the other hand 
seized the letter, and she read it aloud, 
cheek to cheek; but, before she got to 
“an end, her mother’s tears infected her, 
and she must whimper too. 

‘““Here are a couple of geese,’’ said 
Richard Bassett. ‘‘Can’t you write a 
civil reply to a civil letter without snivel- 
ing? [ll answer the letter for you.” ° 

“No!” said Mrs. Bassett. 

Richard was amazed: Ruperta ditto. 

The little woman had never dealt in 
‘* Noes,’’ least of all to her husband ; and 
besides this was such a plump ‘‘ No.” It 
came out of her mouth like a marble. 

I think the sound surprised even her- 
self a little, for she proceeded to justify it 
at once. ‘‘I have been a better wife than 
a Christian thismany years. But there's 
a limit. And, Richard, I should never 
have married you if you had told me we 
were to be at war all our lives with our 
next neighbor, that everybody respects. 
To live in the country, and not speak to 
our only neighbor, that is a life I never 
would have left my father’s house for. 
Not that I complain: if you have been 
bitter to them, you have always been 
good and kind to me; and I hope I have 
done my best to deserve it; but when a 
sick lady, and perhaps dying, holds out 
her hand to me—write her one of your 
cold-blooded letters! ThatIwon’r. Re- 
ply ? my reply will be just putting on my 
bonnet and going to her this afternoon. 
It is Passion-week, too; and that’s not a 
week to play the heathen. Poor lady! 
I’ve seen in her sweet eyes this many 
years that she would gladly be friends 
with me; and she never passed me close 
but she bowed to me, in church or out, 
even when we were at daggers drawn. 


But it is not that altogether. No, if a 
sick woman called me to her bedside this. 
week, I’d go, whether she wrote from 
Huntercombe Hall or the poorest house 
in the place; else how could I hope my 
Saviour would come to my bedside at 
my last hour? ”’ 

This honest burst, from a meek lady 
who never talked nonsense, to be sure, 
but seldom went into eloquence, stag- 


gered Richard Bassett, and enraptured 


Ruperta so, that she flung both arms 
round her mother’s neck, and cried, 
“Oh, mamma! I always thought you 
were the best woman in England, and 
now I know it.’’ 

“Well, well, well,”’ said Richard, kindly 
enough; then to Ruperta, ‘‘Did I ever 
say she was not the best woman in En- 
gland? So you need not set up your 
throats neck and neck at me, like two 
geese at a fox. Unfortunately, she is 
the simplest woman in England, as well 
as the best, and she is going to visit the 
cunningest. That Lady Bassett will turn 
your mother inside out inno time. IJIwish 
you would go with her; you are a shrewd 
eins: 

‘““My daughter will not go till she is 
asked,’’ said Mrs. Bassett, firmly. 

‘‘In that case,’’ said Richard, dryly, 
‘‘let us hope the Lord will protect you, 
since it is for love of Him you go into a 
she-fox’s den.’’ 

No reply was vouchsafed to this aspi- 
ration, the words being the words of 
faith, but the voice the voice of skepti- 
cism. 

Mrs. Bassett put on her bonnet, and 
went to Huntercombe Hall. 

After a very short delay she was ush- 
ered upstairs, to the room where Lady 
Bassett was lying on a sofa. 

Lady Bassett heard her coming, and 
rose to receive her. 

She made Mrs. Bassett a court courtesy 
so graceful and profound that it rather 
frightened the little woman. Seeing 
which, Lady Bassett changed her style, 
and came forward, extending both hands 
with admirable grace, and gentle amity, 


not overdone. 


A TERRIBLE 


Mrs. Bassett gave her both hands, and 
they looked full at each other in silence, 
till the eyes of both ladies began to fill. 


“You would have come—like this— 
years ago~—at a word?” faltered Lady 
Bassett. 

<< Yes,’’ gulped Mrs. Bassett. 

Then there was another long pause. 


‘“Oh, Lady Bassett, what a life! It is 
a wonder it has not killed us both.”’ 

“© Tt will kill one of us.”’ 

‘* Not if I can help it.’’ 

‘“God bless you for saying so! Dear 


madam, sit by me, and let me hold the 
hand I might have had years ago, if I 
had had the courage.”’ 

‘¢Why should you take the blame?” 
said Mrs. Bassett. ‘*‘ We have both been 
good wives: too obedient, perhaps. But 
to have to choose between a husband’s 
commands and God’s law, that is a ter- 
rible thing for any poor woman.”’ 

‘‘ It is, indeed.’’ 

_ Then there was another silence, and an 
awkward pause. Mrs. Bassett broke it, 
with some hesitation. ‘‘I hope, Lady 
Bassett, your present illness is not in 
any way—I hope you do not fear any- 
thing more from my husband ? ” 

‘Oh, Mrs. Bassett! how can I help 
fearing it—especially if we provoke him? 
Mr. Reginald Bassett has returned, and 
you know he once gave your husband 
cause for just resentment.”’ 

‘«‘ Well, but he is older now, and has 
more sense. Even if he should, Ruperta 
and I must try and keep the peace.”’ 

“ Ruperta! I wish I had asked you to 
bring her with you. But I feared to ask 
too much at once.”’ 

*‘T’]l send her to you to-morrow, Lady 
Bassett.”’ 

‘‘}To, bring her.’’ 

«Then tell me your hour.”’ 

‘©Yes, and I will send somebody out of 
the way. I want you both to myself.’’ 


While this conversation was going on 
at Huntercombe, Richard Bassett, being 


left alone with his daguhter, proceeded to 


work with his usual skill upon her young 
mind. 


TEMPTATION. 193 

He reminded her of Mr. Rutland’s pros- 
pects, and said he hoped to see her a 
countess, and the loveliest jewel of the 
Peerage. 

He then told her Mr. Rutland was 
coming to stay a day or two next week, 
and requested her to receive him gra- 
ciously. 

She promised that at once. 

‘‘ That,’ said he, ‘‘ will be a much bet- 


| ter match for you than the younger son 


of Sir Charles Bassett. However, my 
girl is too proud to go into a family where 
she is not welcome.”’ 

‘‘Much too proud for that,’’ said Ru- 
perta. 

He left her smarting under that sug- 
gestion. 

While he was smoking his cigar in the 
garden, Mrs. Bassett came home. She 
was in raptures with Lady Bassett, and 
told her daughter all that had passed ; 
and, in conclusion, that she had prom- 
ised Lady Bassett to take her to Hunter- 
combe to-morrow. 

““Me, dear !’’ cried Ruperta ; 
what can she want of me?”’ 

‘All I know is, her ladyship wishes 
very much to see you. In my opinion, 
you will be very welcome to poor Lady 
Bassett.”’ 

“‘Is she very ill? ”’ 

Mrs. Bassett shook her head. ‘‘ She is 
much changed. She says she should be 
better if we were all at peace ; but I don’t 
know.”’ 

‘“Oh, mamma, I wish it was to-mor- 
row.’ 

They went to Huntercombe next day; 
and, ill as she was, Lady Bassett received 
them charmingly. She was startled by 
Ruperta’s beauty and womanly appear- 
ance, but too well bred to show it, or say 
it allina moment. She spoke to the mo- 
ther first; but presently took occasion to 
turn to the daughter, and to say, ‘“‘ May 
I hope, Miss Bassett, that you are on the 
side of peace, like your dear mother and 
myself ? ’’ 

‘¢T am,”’ said Ruperta, firmly; ‘<I all 
ways was—especially after that beautifu- 
sermon, you know, mamma.”’ 


Says the proud mother, ‘You might tell 
op READE— VOL. VIII. 


‘‘why, 


) 


194 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


Lady Bassett you think it is your mission 
to reunite your father and Sir Charles.”’ 

“Mamma!” said Ruperta, reproach- 
fully. That was to stop her mouth. ‘If 
you tell all the wild things I say to you, 
her ladyship will think me very presumpt- 
uous.”’ 

‘No, no,’’? said Lady Bassett, ‘‘en- 
thusiasm is not presumption. Enthu- 
siasm is beautiful, and the brightest 
flower of youth.”’ 

‘‘T am glad you think so, Lady Bassett; 
for people who have no enthusiasm seem 
very hard and mean to me.”’ 

*¢ And so they are,’’ said Lady Bassett 
warmly. 

But I have no time to record the full 
details of the conversation. I can only 
present the generalresult. Lady Bassett 
thought Ruperta a beautiful and noble 
girl, that any house might be proud to 
adopt; and Ruperta was charmed by 
Lady Bassett’s exquisite manners, and 
touched and interested by her pale yet 
still beautiful face and eyes. They made 
friends ; but it was not till the third visit, 
when many kind things had passed be- 
tween them, that Lady Bassett ventured 
on the subject she had at heart. ‘‘ My 
dear,’’ said she to Ruperta, ‘‘ when I first 
saw you, | wondered at my son Comp- 
ton’s audacity in loving a young lady so 
much more advanced than himself; but 
now I must be frank with you; I think 
the poor boy’s audacity was only a 
proper courage. He has all my sym- 
pathy, and, if he is not quite indifferent 
to you, let me just put in my word, and 
say there is not a young lady in the 
world I could bear for my daughter-in- 
law, now I have seen and talked with 
you, my dear.”’ 

“Thank you, Lady Bassett,’’ said Mrs. 
Bassett ; ‘and, since you have said so 
much, let me speak my mind. So long 
as your son is attached to my daughter, 
I could never welcome any other son-in- 
law. J HAVE GOT THE TIPPET.”’ 

Lady Bassett looked at Ruperta, for an 
explanation. Ruperta only blushed, and 
looked uncomfortable. She hated all al- 
lusion to the feats of her childhood. 

Mrs. Bassett saw Lady Bassett’s look 


of perplexity, and said, eagerly, “ You 
never missed it? All the better. I 
thought I would keep it, for a peace- 
maker partly.”’ 

‘‘My dear friend,’’ said Lady Bassett, 
‘you are speaking riddles to me; what 
tippet ? ’’ 

“The tippet your son took off his own 
shoulders, and put it round my girl, that 
terrible night they were lost in the wood. 
Forgive me keeping it, Lady Bassett—I 
know I was little better than a thief; 
but it was only a tippet to you, and to 
me it was much more. Ah! Lady Bas- 
sett, [have loved your darling boy ever 
since; you can’t wonder, you are a 
mother; and,’’ turning suddenly on Ru- 
perta, ‘why do you keep saying he is 
only a boy? If he was man enough to 
do that at seven years of age, he must 
have a manly heart. No; I couldn’t 
bear the sight of any other son-in-law ; 
and when you are a mother you’ll under- 
stand many things, and, for one, you’ll— 
under—stand—why I’m so—fool—ish ; 
seeing the sweet boy’s mother ready—to 
cry—too—oh ! oh! oh!” 

Lady Bassett held out her arms to her, 
and the mothers had a sweet cry to- 
gether in each other’s arms. 

Ruperta’s eyes were wet at this; but 
she told her mother she ought not to 
agitate Lady Bassett, and she so ill. 

‘And that is true, my good, sensible 
girl,’ said Mrs. Bassett; ‘“‘but it has 
lain in my heart these nine years, and | 
could not keep it to inyself any longer. 
But you are a beauty and a spoiled child, 
and so I suppose you think nothing of 
his giving you his tippet to keep you 
warm.”’ 

‘*Don’t say that, mamma,”’ said Ru- 
perta, reproachfully. ‘‘I spoke to dear 
Compton about it not long ago. He 
had forgotten all about it, even.’’ 

‘¢ All the more to his credit; but don’t 
you ever forget it, my own girl.” 

““T never will, mamma.”’ 

By degrees the three became so un- 
reserved that Ruperta was gently urged 
to declare her real sentiments. 

By this time the young beauty was 
quite cured of her fear iest she should 


ee 


A THRRIBLE 


be an unwelcome daughter-in-law ; but 
there was an obstacle in her own mind. 
She was a frank, courageous girl; but 
this appeal tried her hard. 

She blushed, fixed her eyes steadily on 
the ground, and said, pretty firmly and 
very slowly, “I had always a great af- 
fection for my cousin Compton; and so 
[have now. But I am notin love with 
him. He is but a boy; now I—” 

A glance at the large mirror, and a 
superb smile of beauty and conscious 
womanhood, completed the sentence. 

‘‘He will get older every day,’’ said 
Mrs. Bassett. 

‘¢ And so shall I.’’ 

‘But you will not look older, and he 
will. You have come to your full growth. 
He hasn’t.”’ 

‘“T agree with the dear girl,’’ said 
Lady Bassett, adroitly. ‘‘ Compton, 
‘with his fair hair, looks so young, it 
would be ridiculous at present. But it 
is possible to be engaged, and wait a 
proper time for marriage; what I fear is, 
lest you should be tempted by some other 
offer. To speak plainly, I hear that Mr. 
Rutland pays his addresses to you, and 
visits at Highmore.”’ 

‘Yes, he has been there twice.’’ 

‘He is welcome to your father; and 
his prospects are dazzling ; and he is not 
a boy, for he has long mustaches.’’ 

“‘T am not dazzled by his mustaches, 
and still less by his prospects,’’ said the 
fair young beauty. 

‘*You are an extraordinary girl.’’ 

“That she is,’’ said Mrs. Bassett. 
“Her father has no more power over her 
than I have.”’ 


“Oh, mamma! am I a disobedient 
girl, then ?”’ 
‘No, no. Only in this one thing, I see 


you will go your own way.”’ 

Lady Bassett put in her word. ‘“ Well, 
but this one thing is the happiness or 
misery of her whole life. I cannot blame 
her for looking well before she leaps.”’ 

A grateful look from Ruperta’s glori- 
ous eyes repaid the speaker. 

‘“‘ But,’? said Lady Bassett, tenderly, 
‘‘it is something to have two mothers 
when you marry, instead of one; and 


TEMPTATION. 195 
you would have twa, my love; I would 
try and live for you.”’ 

This touched Ruperta to the heart ; 
she curled round Lady Bassett’s neck, 
and they kissed each other like mother 
and daughter. 

“This is too great a temptation,” said 
Ruperta. ‘Yes; I will engage myself 
to Cousin Compton, if papa’s consent 
can be obtained. Without his consent I 
could not marry any one.’’ 

‘‘ Nobody can obtain it, if you cannot,”’ 
said Mrs. Bassett. 

Ruperta shook her head. ‘‘ Mark my 
words, mamma, it will take me years to 
gain it. Papa is as obstinate as a mule. 
To be sure, | am as obstinate as fifty.”’ 

‘It shall not take years, nor yet 
months,’’? said Lady Bassett. ‘‘I know 
Mr. Bassett’s objection, and I will re- 
move it, cost me what it may.” 

This speech surprised the other two 
ladies so, they made no reply. 

Said Lady Bassett firmly, ‘‘Do you 
pledge yourself to me, if I can obtain Mr. 
Bassett’s consent ? ”’ 

“‘T do,’’ said Ruperta. ‘‘ But—”’ 

‘¢You think my power with your father 
must be smaller than yours. I hope to 
show you you are mistaken.”’ 

The ladies rose to go: Lady Bassett 
took leave of them thus: ‘* Good-by, 
my most valued friend, and sister in sor- 
row; good-by, my dear daughter.”’ 


At the gate of Huntercombe, whom 
should they meet but Compton Bassett, 
looking very pale and unhappy. 

He was upon honor not to speak to 
Ruperta; but he gazed on her with a 
wistful and terrified look that was very 
touching. She gave him a soft pitying 
smile in return, that drove him almost 


~wild with hope. 


That night Richard Bassett sat in his 
chair, gloomy. 

When his wife and daughter spoke to 
him in their soft accents, he returned 
short, surly answers. Evidently a storm 
was brewing. 

At last it burst. He had heard of Ru- 
perta’s repeated visits to Huntercombe 
Hall. ‘‘ You are not dealing fairly with 


196 WORKS 
me, you two,”’ said he. ‘‘I allowed you 
to go once to see a woman that says she 
is very ill; but I warned you she was the 
cunningest woman in creation, and would 
make a fool of you both; and now [I find 
you are always going. This will not do. 
She is netting two simple birds that I 
have the care of. Now, listen to me; I 
forbid you two ever to set foot in that 
house again. Do you hear me?”’ 

‘‘ We hear you, papa,’’ said Mrs. Bas- 
sett, quietly ; ‘‘we must be deaf, if we 
did not.”’ 

Ruperta kept her countenance with 
difficulty. 

‘‘ Tt is not a request, it is a command.”’ 

Mrs. Bassett for once in her life fired 


up. ‘‘ And a most tyrannical one,’’ said 
she. 

Ruperta put her hand before her 
mother’s mouth, then turned to her 
father. 


‘‘There was no need to express your 
wish so harshly, papa. We shall obey.’’ 

Then she whispered her mother, ‘‘ And 
Mr. Rutland shall pay for it.” 

Mrs. Bassett communicated this behest 
to Lady Bassett in a letter. 

Then Lady Bassett summoned all her 
courage, and sent for her son Compton. 
‘‘Compton,”’ said she, ‘‘ I must speak to 
Reginald. Can you find him ?”’ 

‘Oh yes, [can find him. I am sorry 
to say anybody can find him at this time 
of day.”’ 

“<'Why, where is he? ”’ 

‘<7 hardly like to tell you.”’ 

‘‘Do you think his peculiarities have 
escaped me ? ”’ 

** At the public-house.’’ 

‘Ask him to come to me.”’ 


Compton went to the public-house, and 
there, to his no small disgust, found Mr. 
Reginald Bassett playing the fiddle, and 
four people, men and women, dancing to 
the sound, while one or two more smoked 
and looked on. 

Compton restrained himself till the end 
of that dance, and then stepped up to 
Reginald and whispered him, ‘‘ Mamma 
wants to see you directly.”’ 

‘¢ Tell her I’m busy.”’ 


OF CHARLES READE. 


*‘T shall tell her nothing of the kind. 
You know she is very ill, and has 
not seen you yet; and now she wants 
to. So come along at once, like a good 
fellow.”’ 

‘* Youngster,’’ said Reginald, ‘‘it is a 
rule with me never to leave a young 
woman for an old one.”’ 

‘Not for your mother ?”’ 

‘*No, nor my grandmother either.”’ 

‘Then you were born without a heart. 
But you shall come, whether you like it 
or not—though I have to drag you there 
by the throat.”’ 

‘‘ Learn to spell ‘able’ first.” 

‘*T’ll spell it on your head, if you don’t 
come.”’ 

“Oh, that is the game, young un, is 
We 

SY escny 

‘‘ Well, don’t let us have a shindy on 
the bricks ; there is a nice little paddock: 
outside. Come out there and I’ll give you 
a lesson.’’ 

“Thank you; I don’t feel inclined to 
assist you in degrading our family.”’ 

“Chaps that are afraid to fight 
shouldn’t threaten. Come now, the first 
knock-down blow shall settle it. If I win, 
you stay here and dance with us. If you 
win, I go to the old woman.”’ 

Compton consented, somewhat reluc- 
tantly ; but to do him justice, his reluc- 
tance arose entirely from his sense of re- 
lationship, and not from any fear of his 
senior. 

The young gentlemen took off their 
coats, and proceeded to spar without any 
further ceremony. 

Reginald, whose agility was greater 
than his courage, danced about on the 
tips of his toes, and succeeded in planting 
a tap or two on Compton’s cheek. 

Compton smarted under these, and 
presently, in following his antagonist, who 
fought like a shadow, he saw Ruperta 
and her mother looking horror-stricken 
over the palings. 

Infuriated with Reginald for this ex- 
posure, he rushed in at him, received a 
severe cut over the eye, but dealt him 
with his mighty Anglo-Saxon arm a full 
straightforward smasher on the forehead, 


A TERRIBLE 


which knocked him head over heels like a 
nine-pin. 

That active young man picked himself 
up wondrous slowly ; rheumatism seemed 
to have suddenly seized his well-oiled 
joints ; he then addressed his antagonist, 
in his most ingratiating tones—‘“‘ All right, 
sir,’ said he. ‘‘ You are the best man. 
I’ll go to the old lady this minute.’’ 

lal see. you | go,’? said!’ Compton, 
sternly ; ‘‘and mind I can run as well as 
hit: so none of your gypsy tricks with 
me.”’ . 

Then he came sheepishly to the pal- 
ings and said, ‘‘It is not my fault, Miss 
Bassett ; he would not come to mamma 
without, and she wants to speak to 
him? 

“Oh! he is hurt! he is wounded !”’ 
cried Ruperta. ‘‘Come here to me.”’ 

He came to her, and she pressed her 
white handkerchief tenderly on his eye- 
brow ; it was bleeding a little. 

‘Well, are you coming ?’’ said Regi- 
nald, ironically, ‘‘or do you like young 
women better than old ones ?”’ 

Compton instantly drew back a little, 
made two steps, laid his hand on the pal- 
ings, vaulted over, and followed Regi- 
nald. 

‘“That’s your boy,’’ said Mrs. Bassett. 

Ruperta made no reply, but began to 
gulp. 

“¢ What is the matter, darling? ”’ 

‘The fighting—the blood ’’—said Ru- 
perta, sobbing. 

Mrs. Bassett drew her on one side, and 
soon soothed her. 

When their gentle bosoms got over 
their agitation, they rather enjoyed the 
thing, especially Ruperta: she detested 
Reginald for his character, and for having 
insulted her father. 

All of a sudden, she cried out, ‘‘ He has 
taken my handkerchief. How dare he ?”’ 
And she affected anger. 

‘Never mind, dear,’’ said Mrs. Bas- 
sett, coolly, ‘‘we have got his tippet.”’ 


TEMPTATION. 19% 


CHAPTER XLITI. 


COULD any one have iooked through 
the keyhole at Lady Bassett waiting for 
Reginald, he would have seen, by the very 
movements of her body, the terrible agi- 
tation of the mind. She rose—she sat 
down—she walked about with wild energy 
—she dropped on the sofa, and appeared 
to give it up as impossible; but ere long 
that deadly languor gave way to impa- 
tient restlessness again. 

At last her quick ear heard a footstep 
in the corridor, accompanied by no rustle 
of petticoats, and yet the footstep was not 
Compton’s. 

Instantly she glanced with momentary 
terror toward the door. 

There was a tap. 

She sat down, and said, with a tone 
from which all agitation was instantly 
banished, ‘‘ Come in.’’ 

The door opened, and the swarthy Regi- 
nald, diabolically handsome, with his 
black snaky curls, entered the room. 

She rose from her chair, and fixed her 
great eyes on him, as if she would read 
him soul and body before she ventured to 
Speak. 

‘Here lam, mamma: sorry to see you 
look so ill.’’ 

‘Thank you, my dear,’’ said Lady Bas- 
sett, without relaxing for a moment that 
searching gaze. 

She said, still covering him with her 
eye, ‘Would you cure me if you could 2?” 

To appreciate this opening, and Lady 
Bassett’s sweet engaging manner, you 
must understand that this young man 
was, in her eyes, a sort of black snake. 
Her flesh crept, with fear and repug- 
nance, at the sight of him. Yet that is 
how she received him, being a mother de- 
fending her favorite son. 

“Of course I would,’’ said Reginald. 
“* Just you tell me how.’’ 

Excellent words. But the lady’s calm 
infallible eye saw a cunning twinkle in 
those black twinkling orbs. Young as he 
was, he was on his guard, and waiting 
for her. Nor was this surprising: Regi- 
nald, naturally intelligent, had accumu- 
lated a large stock of low cunning in his 


198 * 


travels and adventures with the gypsies, 
a smooth and cunning people. Lady Bas- 
sett’s fainting upon his return, his exclu- 
sion from her room, and one or two minor 
circumstances, had set him thinking. 

The moment she saw that look, Lady 
Bassett, with swift tact, glided away 
from the line she had intended to open, 
and, after merely thanking him, and say- 
ing, ‘‘I believe you, dear,’’ though she 
did not believe him, she resumed, in a very 
impressive tone, ‘‘ You see me worse than 
ever to-day, because my mind is in great 
trouble. The time is come when I must 
tell you a secret, which will cause you a 
bitter’ disappointment. Why I send for 
you is, to see whether I cannot do some- 
thing for you to make you happy, in spite 
of that cruel disappointment.”’ 

Not a word from Reginald. 

“Mr. Bassett—forgive me, if you can 
—for Iam the most miserable woman in 
England—you are not the heir to this 
place ; you are not Sir Charles Bassett’s 
son.”’ 

“ What!’’ shouted the young man. 

Her fortitude gave way for a moment. 
She shook her head, in confirmation of 
what she had said, and hid her burning 
face and scalding tears in her white and 
wasted hands. 

There was a long silence. 

Reginald was asking himself if this 
could be true, or was it a maneuver to 
put her favorite Compton over his head. 

Lady Bassett looked up, and saw this 
paltry suspicion in his face. She dried 
her tears directly, and went to a bureau, 
unlocked it, and produced the manu- 
seript confession she had prepared for 
her husband. 

She bade Reginald observe the super- 
scription and the date. 

When he had done so, she took her 
scissors and opened it for him. 

‘“*Read what I wrote to my beloved 
husband at a time when I expected soon 
to appear before my Judge.”’ 

She then sank upon the sofa, and lay 
there like a log; only, from time to time, 
during the long reading, tears trickled 
from her eyes. 

Reginald read the whole story, and saw 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


the facts must be true: more than that, 
being young, and a man, he could not en- 
tirely resist the charm of a narrative in 
which a lady told at full the love, the 
grief, the terror, the sufferings, of her 
heart, and the terrible temptation under 
which she had gone astray. 

He laid it down at last, and drew a 
long breath. "wis 

‘*It’s a devil of a job for me,”’ said he; 
“put I can’t blame you. You sold that 
Dick Bassett, and I hate him. But what 
is to become of me ?”’ . 

“What I offer you is a life in which 
you will be happier than you ever could 
be at Huntercombe. I mean to buy you 
vast pasture-fields in Australia, and cat- 
tle to feed. Those noble pastures will be 
bounded only by wild forests and hills. 
You will have swift horses to ride over 
your own domain, or to gallop hundreds 
of miles at a stretch, if you like. No 
confinement there; no fences and bound- 
aries; allas free as air. No monotony: 
one week you can dig for gold, another 
you can ride among your flocks, another 
you can hunt. All this ina climate so de- 
lightful that you can lie all night in the 
open air, without a blanket, under a new 
firmament of stars, not one of which 
illumines the dull nights of Europe.”’ 

The bait was too tempting. ‘* Well, 
you are the right sort,’’ cried Reginald. 

But presently he began to doubt. “ But 
all that will cost a lot of money.”’ 

“Tt will, but I have a great deal of 
money.” 

Reginald thought, and said, suspicious- 
ly, ‘‘I don’t know why you should do all 
this for me.’’ 

‘*Do you not? What! when I have 
brought you into this family, and encour- 
aged you in such vast expectations, could 
I, in honor and common humanity, let 
you fall into poverty and neglect? No. 
I have many thousand pounds, all my 
own, and you will have them all, and 
perhaps waste them all; but it will take 
you some time, because, while you are 
wasting, I shall be saving more for 
wou. 

Then there was a pause, each waiting 
for the other. 


A TERRIBLE 


Then Lady Bassett said, quietly, and 
with great apparent composure, ‘‘ Of 
course there is a condition attached to 
all this.”’ 

‘‘What is that?” 

‘*T must receive from you a written 
paper, signed by yourself and by Mrs. 
Meyrick, acknowledging that vou are not 
Sir Charles’s son, but distinctly pledging 
yourself to keep the secret so long as I 
continue to furnish you with the means of 
living. You hesitate. Is it not fair?”’ 

«Well, it looks fair; but itis an awk- 
ward thing, signing a paper of that sort.”’ 

“You doubt me, sir; you think that, 
because I have told one great falsehood, 
from good but erring motives, I may 
break faith with you. Do not insult me 
with these doubts, sir. Try and under- 
stand that there are ladies and gentlemen 
in the world, though you prefer gypsies. 
Have you forgotten that night when you 
laid me under so deep a debt, and I told 
you I never would forget it? From that 
day was I not always your friend ? was I 
not always the one to make excuses for 
y OUa aia 

Reginald assented to that. 

‘Then trust me. I pledge you my 
honor that lam this day the best friend 
you ever had, or ever can have. Refuse 
to sign that paper, and I shall soon be in 
my grave, leaving behind me my confes- 
sion, and other evidence, on which you 
will be dismissed from this house with 
ignominy, and without a farthing; for 
your best friend will be dead, and you will 
have killed her.”’ 

He looked at her full: he said, with a 
shade of compunction, ‘“‘ lam not a gentle- 
man, but you area lady. I'll trust you. 
ll sign anything you like.”’ 

‘‘That confidence becomes you,”’ said 
Lady Bassett ; ‘‘and now I have no ob- 
jection to show you I deserve it. Here is 
a letter to Mr. Rolfe, by which you may 
learn I have already placed three thou- 
sand pounds to his account, to be laid out 
by him for your benefit in Australia, where 
he has many confidential friends; and 
this is a check for five hundred pounds I 
drew in your favor yesterday. Dome the 
favor to take it.”’ 


¥ 


THMPTATION. 199 

He did her that favor with sparkling 
eyes. 

‘* Now here is the paper I wish you to 
sign; but your signature will be of little 
value to me without Mary Meyrick’s.”’ 

‘*Oh, she will sign it directly : I have 
only to tell her.’’ 

<“ Are you sure? Men can be brought 
to take a dispassionate view of their own 
interest, but women are not so wise. Take 
it, and try her. If she refuses, bring her 
to me directly. Do you understand? 
Otherwise, in one fatal hour, her tongue 
will ruin you, and destroy me.’’ 

Impressed with these words, Reginald 
hurried to Mrs. Meyrick, and told her, in 
an off-hand way, she must sign that paper 
directly. : 

She looked at it and turned very white, 
but went on her guard directly. 

‘‘Sign such a wicked lie as that !”’ said 
she. ‘*That I never will. You are his son, 


and Huntercombe shall be yours. She is 
an unnatural mother.’’ 
‘Gammon!’ said Reginald. ‘ You 


might as well say a fox is the son of a 
gander. Come now; I am not going to 
let you cut my throat with your tongue. 
Sign at once, or else come to her this 
moment and tell her so.”’ 

“That I will,” said Mary Meyrick, 
‘‘and give her my mind.” 


This doughty resolution was a little 
shaken when she cast eyes upon Lady 
Bassett, and saw how wan and worn she 
looked. 

She moderated her violence, and said, 
sullenly, ‘‘ Sorry to gainsay you, my lady, 
and you so ill, but this is a paper I never 
can sign. It would rob him of Hunter- 
combe. I’d sooner cut my hand off at 
the wrist.”’ 

‘Nonsense, Mary !’’ said Lady Bassett, 
contemptuously. | 

She then proceeded to reason with her, 
but it was no use. Mary would not listen 
to reason, and defied her at last in a loud 
voice. 

‘Very well,’’ said Lady Bassett. ‘““Then 
since you will not do it my way, it shall 
be done another way. I shall put my 
confession in Sir Charles’s hands, and in- 


200 


sist on his dismissing him from the house, 
and you from your farm. It will kill me, 
and the money I intended for Reginald I 
shall leave to Compton.’’ 

‘‘These are idle words, my lady. 
daren’t.”’ 

‘¢ 7 dare anything when once I make up 
my mind to die.”’ 

She rang the bell. 

Mary Meyrick affected contempt. 

A servant came to the door. 

** Request Sir Charles to come to me im- 
mediately.’’ 


You 


CHAPTER XLIV. 


“Don’t you be a fool,’’ said Reginald 
to his nurse. 

«‘Sir Charles will send you to prison for 
it,’’? said Lady Bassett. 

‘* Kor what [ done along with you? ”’ 

‘*Oh, he will not punish his wife; he 
will look out for some other victim.”’ 

«‘Sign, you d—d old fool! ’”’ cried Regi- 
nald, seizing Mary Meyrick roughly by 
the arm. 

Strange to say, Lady Bassett inter- 
fered, with a sort of majestic horror. She 
held up her hand, and said, ‘‘ Do not dare 
to lay a finger on her! ”’ 

Then Mary burst into tears, and said 
she would sign the paper. 

While she was signing it, Sir Charles’s 
step was heard in the corridor. 

He knocked at the door just as she 
signed. Reginald had signed already. 

Lady Bassett put the paper into the 
manuscript book, and the book into the 
bureau, and said “‘ Come in,’’ with an ap- 
pearance of composure belied by her beat- 
ing heart. 

‘‘ Here is Mrs. Meyrick, my dear.’’ 

In those few seconds so perfect a liar 
as Mary Meyrick had quite recovered her- 
self. 

“Tf you please, sir,’’ said she, ‘‘I be 
come to ast if you will give us anew lease, 
for ourn it is run out.’’ 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


‘*You had better talk to the steward 
about that.’’ | 

“Very well, sir,’’ and she made her 
courtesy. 

Reginald remained, not knowing ex- 
actly what to do. 

‘* My dear,’’ said Lady Bassett, ‘‘ Reg- 
inald has come to bid us good-by. He is 
going to visit Mr. Rolfe, and take his ad- 
vice, if you have no objection.’’ 

‘None whatever; and I hope he will 
treat it with more respect than he does 
mine.”’ 

Reginald shrugged his shoulders, and 
was going out, when Lady Bassett said, 
‘‘Won’t you kiss me, Reginald, as you 
are going away ?”’ 

He came to her: she kissed him, and 
whispered in his ear, ‘‘ Be true to me, as 
I will be to you.”’ 

Then he left her, and she felt like a dead 
thing, with exhaustion. She lay on the 
sofa, and Sir Charles sat beside her, and 
made her drink a glass of wine. 

She lay very still that afternoon; but 
at night she slept: a load was off her 
mind for the present. 

Next day she was so much better she 
came down to dinner. 

What she now hoped was, that entire 
separation, coupled with the memory of 
the boy’s misdeeds, would cure Sir 
Charles entirely of his affection for Reg- 
inald; and so that, after about twenty 
years more of conjugal fidelity, she might 
find courage to reveal to her husband the 
fault of her youth at a time when all its 
good results remained to help excuse it, 
and all its bad results had vanished. 

Such was the plan this extraordinary 
woman conceived, and its success so far 
had a wonderful effect on her health. 

But a couple of days passed, and she 
did not hear either from Reginald or Mr. 
Rolfe. That made her a little anxious. ~ 

On the third day Compton asked 
her, with an angry flush on his brow, 
whether she had not sent Reginald up to 
London. 

«Yes, dear,’’ said Lady Bassett. 

‘«‘ Well, he is not gone, then.”’ 

cf ONES 


‘He is living at hisnurse’s. I saw him 


A THRRIBLE 


talking to an old gypsy that lives on the 
farm.’’ 

Lady Bassett groaned, but said nothing. 

‘* Never mind, mamma,’’ said Compton. 
‘* Your other children must love you all 
the more.”’ 

This news caused Lady Bassett both 
anxiety and terror. Shedivined bad faith 
and all manner of treachery, none the less 
terrible for being vague. 

Down went her health again and her 
short-lived repose. 

Meantime Reginald, in reality, was 
staying at the farm on a little business of 
his own. 

He had concerted an expedition with 
the foreign gent, and was waiting fora 
dark and gusty night. 

He had undertaken this expedition with 
mixed motives, spite and greed, especially 
the latter. He would never have under- 
taken it with a 500/. check in his pocket; 
but some minds are so constituted they 
cannot forego a bad design once formed : 
so Mr. Reginald persisted, though one 
great motive existed no longer. 

On this expedition it is now our lot to 
accompany him. 

The night was favorable, and at about 
two o’clock Reginald and the foreign gent 
stood under Richard Bassett’s dining- 
room window, with crape over their eyes, 
noses and mouths, and all manner of un- 
lawful implements in their pockets. 

The foreign gent prized the shutters 
open with a little crowbar ; he then, with 
a glazier’s diamond, soon cut out a small 
pane, inserted a cunning hand and opened 
the window. 

Then Reginald gave him a leg, and he 
got into the room. 

The agile youth followed him without 
assistance. 

They lighted a sort of bull’s-eye, and 
poured the concentrated light on the cup- 
board door, behind which lay the treasure 
of glorious old plate. 

Then the foreign gent produced his 
skeleton keys, and after several ineffect- 
ive trials, opened the door softly and re- 
vealed the glittering booty. 

At sight of it the foreign gent could not 
Suppress an ejaculation, but the younger 


rapid footstep, 


TEMPTATION. 201 
one clapped his hand before his mouth 
hurriedly. 

The foreign gent unrolled a sort of green 
baize apron he had round him; it was, in 
reality, a bag. 

Into this receptacle the pair conveyed 
one piece of plate after another with sur- 
prising dexterity, rapidity, and noiseless- 
ness. When it was full, they began to 
fill the deep pockets of their shooting- 
jackets. 

While thus employed, they heard a 
and Richard Bassett 
opened the door. He was in his trousers 
and shirt, and had a pistol in his hand. 

At sight of him Reginald uttered a cry 
of dismay ; the foreign gent blew out the 
light. | 

Richard Bassett, among whose faults 
want of personal courage was not one, 
rushed forward and collared Reginald. 

But the foreign gent had raised the 
crowbar to defend himself, and struck him 
a blow on the head that made him 
stagger back. 

The foreign gent seized this opportu- 
nity, and ran at once at the window and 
jumped at it. 

If Reginald had been first, he would 
have gone through like a cat, but the 
foreign gent, older, and obstructed by 
the contents of his pocket, higgled and 
stuck a few seconds in the window. 

That brief delay was fatal; Richard 
Bassett leveled his pistol deliberately at 
him, fired, and sent a ball through his 
shoulder; he fell like a log upon the 
ground outside. 

Richard then leveled another barrel at 
Reginald, but he howled out for quarter, 
and was immediately captured, and with 
the assistance of the brave Jessie, who 
now came boldly to her master’s aid, his 
hands were tied behind him and he was 
made prisoner, with the stolen articles in 
his pocket. 

When they were tying him, he whim- 
pered, and said it was only a lark; he 
never meant to keep anything. He of- 
fered a hundred pounds down if they 
would let him off. 

But there was no mercy for him. 

Richard Bassett had a candle lighted, 


202 WORKS 


and inspected the prisoner. He lifted his | 


crape veil, and said ‘‘ Oho !”’ 

‘You see it was only a lark,” said 
Reginald, and shook in every limb. 

Richard Bassett smiled grimly, and 
said nothing. He gave Jessie strict or- 
ders to hold her tongue, and she and he 
between them took Reginald and locked 
him up in a small room adjoining the 
kitchen. 

They then went to look for the other 
burglar. 


He had emptied his pockets of all the. 


plate, and crawled away. It is supposed 
he threw away the plate, either to soften 
Reginald’s offense, or in the belief that 
he had received his death wound, and 
should not require silver vessels where he 
was going. 

Bassett picked up the articles and 
brought them in, and told Jessie to light 
the fire and make him a cup of coffee. 

He replaced all the plate, except the 
articles left in Reginald’s pocket. 

Then he went upstairs, and told his 
wife that burglars had broken into the 
house, but had taken nothing; she was 
to give herself no anxiety. He told her 
no more than this, for his dark and cruel 
nature had already conceived an idea he 
did not care to communicate to her, on 
account of the strong opposition he fore- 
saw from so good a Christian: besides, 
of late, since her daughter came home to 
back her, she had spoken her mind more 
than once. 

He kept them then in the dark, and 
went downstairs again to his coffee. 

He sat and sipped it, and, with it, his 
coming vengeance. 

All the defeats and mortifications he 
had endured from Huntercombe returned 
to his mind; and now, with one master- 
stroke he would balance them all. 

Yet he felt a little compunction. 

Active hostilities had ceased for many 
years. . 

Lady Bassett, at all events, had held 
out the hand to his wife. The blow he 
meditated was very cruel: would not his 
wife and daughter say it was barbarous ? 
W ould not his own heart, the heart of a 
father, reproach him afterward ? 


OF CHARLES READE. 


These misgivings, that would have re- 
strained a less obstinate man, irritated 
Richard Bassett: he went into a rage, 
and said aloud, ‘‘1 must do it: I will do 
it, come what may.”’ 

He told Jessie he valued her much: 
she should have a black silk gown for her 
courage and fidelity; but she must not be 
faithful by halves. She must not: breathe 
one word to any soul in the house that 
the burglar was there under lock and 
key ; 1f she did, he should turn her out of 
the house that moment. 

‘‘Hets!’’ said the woman, “der ye 
think I canna haud my whist, when the 
maister bids me? I’m nae great clasher 
at ony time, for my pairt.”’ 

At seven o’clock in the morning he sent 
a note to Sir Charles Bassett, to say that 
his house had been attacked last night by 
two armed burglars; he and his people 
had captured one, and wished to take him 
before a magistrate at once, since his 


house was not a fit place to hold him se- 


cure. He concluded Sir Charles would 
not refuse him the benefit of the law, how- 
ever obnoxious he might be. 

Sir Charles’s lips curled with contempt 
at the man who was not ashamed to put 
such a doubt on paper. 

However, he wrote back a civil line, to 
say that of course he was at Mr. Bassett’s 
service, and would be in his justice-room 
at nine o’clock. 

Meantime, Mr. Richard Bassett went 
for the constable and an assistant; but, 
even to them, he would not say precisely 
what he wanted them for. 

His plan was to march an unknown 
burglar, with his crape on his face, into 
Sir Charles’s study, give his evidence, and 
then reveal the son to the father. 

Jessie managed to hold her tongue for 
an hour or two, and nothing occurred at 
Highmore or in Huntercombe to interfere 
with Richard Bassett’s barbarous re- 
venge. 

Meantime, however, something remark- 
able had occurred at the distance of a 
mile and a quarter. 

Mrs. Meyrick breakfasted habitually at 
eight o’clock. 

Reginald did not appear. 


A THRRIBLEH 


Mrs. Meyrick went to his room, and 
satisfied herself: he had not passed the 
night there. 

Then she went to the foreign gent’s 
shed. — 

He was not there. : 

Then she went out, and called loudly 
to them both. 

No answer. 

Then she went into the nearest meadow, 
to see if they were in sight. 

The first thing she saw was the foreign 
gent staggering toward her. 

“Drunk !”’ said she, and went to scold 
him ; but, when she got nearer, she saw 
at once that something very serious had 
happened. His dark face was bloodless 
and awful, and he could hardly drag his 
limbs along; indeed they had failed him 
a score of times between Highmore and 
that place. 

Just as she came up with him he sank 
once more to the ground, and turned up 
two despairing eyes toward her. 

“Oh, daddy! what is it? Where’s 
Reginald ? Whatever have they done to 
you?’’ 

‘Brandy ! ’’ 
man. 

She flew into the house, and returned in 
a moment with a bottle. She put it to 
his lips. 

He revived and told her all, in a few 
words. 

‘The young bloke and I went to crack 
acrib. I’m shot with a bullet. Hide me 
in that loose hay there; leave me the 
bottle, and let nobody come nigh me. 
The beak will be after me very soon.”’ 

Then Mrs. Meyrick, being a very strong 
woman, dragged him to the haystack, 
and covered him with loose hay. 

‘* Now,’’ said she, trembling, ‘* where’s 
my boy ?”’ 

*‘He’s nabbed.”’ 

NTT Pea 

“‘ And he’ll be lagged, unless you can 
beg him off.’’ 

Mary Meyrick uttered 
scream. 

“You wretch! to tempt my boy to 
this. And him with five hundred pounds 
in his pocket, and my lady’s favor. Oh, 


groaned the wounded 


a piercing 


TEMPTATION. 2038 
why did we not keep our word with her ? 
She was the wisest, and our best friend. 
But it is all your doing; you are the 
devil that tempted him, you old vil- 
lain !”’ 

‘** Don’t miscall me,’’ said the gypsy. 

‘Not miscall you, when you have run 
away, and left them to take my boy to 
jail! No word is bad enough for you, 
you villain !’’ 

“Pm your father—and a dying man,”’ 
said the old gypsy, calmly, and folded his 
hands upon his breast with Oriental com- 
posure and decency. 

The woman threw herself on her knees. 
‘‘Horgive me, father—tell me, where is 
hese 

** Highmore House.”’ 

At that simple word her eyes dilated 
with wild horror, she uttered a loud 
scream, and fiew into the house. 

In five minutes she was on her way to 
Highmore. 

She reached that house, knocked hastily 
at the door, and said she must see Mr. 
Richard Bassett that moment. 

“He is just gone out,”’ said the maid. 

“Where to ?”’ 

The girl knew her, and began to gos- 
sip. ‘‘Why, to Huntercombe Hall. 
What! haven’t you heard, Mrs. Mey- 
rick? Master caught a robber last night. 
Laws! you should have seen him: he 
have got crape all over his face; and 
master, and the constable, and Mr. 
Musters, they be all gone with him 
to Sir Charles, for to have him com- 
mitted—the villain! Why, what ails the 
woman ? ”’ 

For Mary Meyrick turned her back on 
the speaker, and rushed away in a 
moment. 

She went through the kitchen at Hun- 
tercombe: she was so well known there, 
nobody objected: she flew up the stairs, 
and into Lady Bassett’s bedroom. ‘Oh, 
my lady! my lady!”’ - 

Lady Bassett screamed, at her sudden 
entrance and wild appearance. 

Mary Meyrick told her all in a few wild 
words. She wrung her hands with a 
great fear. 

‘‘It’s no time for that,’’ cried Mary, 


204 


fiercely. ‘‘ Come down this moment, and 
save him.”’ 

‘‘ How can I? ’’ 

“You must! You shall!’ cried the 
other. ‘‘ Don’t ask me how. Don’t sit 
wringing your hands, woman. If you are 
not there in five minutes to save him, I’ll 
tell all.”’ 

‘‘Have mercy on me!” cried Lady 
Bassett. ‘‘l gave him money, I sent him 
away. It’s not my fault.’ 

‘“No matter ; he must be saved, or [ll 
ruin you. I can’t stay here: I must be 
there, and so must you.”’ 

She rushed down the stairs, and tried 
to get into the justice-room, but admis- 
sion was refused her. 

Then she gave a sort of wild snarl, and 
ran round to the small room adjoining 
the justice-room. Through this she pene- 
trated, and entered the justice-room, but 
not in time to prevent the evidence from 
being laid before Sir Charles. 

What took place in the meantime was 
briefly this: The prisoner, handcuffed 
now instead of tied, was introduced be- 
tween the constable and his assistant ; 
the door was locked, and Sir Charles re- 
ceived Mr. Bassett with a ceremonious 
bow, seated himself, and begged Mr. 
Bassett to be seated. 

“Thank you,’”’ said Mr. Bassett, but 
did not seat himself. He stood before the 
prisoner and gave his evidence; during 
which the prisoner’s knees were seen to 
knock together with terror: he was a 
young man fit for folly, but not for 
felony. 

Said Richard Bassett, ‘‘I have a cup- 
board containing family plate. It is valu- 
able, and some years ago I passed a piece 
of catgut from the door through the ceil- 
ing to a bell at my bedside. 

“Very late last night the bell sounded. 
I flung on my trousers, and went down 
with a pistol. I caught two burglars in 
the act of rifling the cupboard. I went to 
collar one; hestruck me on the head with 
a crowbar—constable, show the crowbar 
—I staggered, but recovered myself, and 
fired at one of the burglars: he was just 
struggling through the window... He fell, 
and I thought he was dead, but he got 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


away. I secured the other, and here he is 
—just as he was when I took him. Con- 
stable, search his pockets.’’ 

The constable did so, and produced 
therefrom several pieces of silver plate 
stamped with the Bassett arms. 

‘““My servant here can confirm this,”’ 
added Mr. Bassett. 

‘It is not necessary here,’’ said Sir 
Charles. Then to the criminal, ‘“‘ Have 
you anything to say ? ”’ 

““It was only a lark,’’? quavered the 
poor wretch. 

‘*T would not advise you to say that 
where you are going.”’ 

He then, while writing out the warrant, 
said, aS a matter of course, ‘“‘ Remove his 
mask.”’ 

The constable lifted it, and started back 
with a shout of dismay and surprise: Jes- 
sie screamed. 

Sir Charles looked up, and saw in the 
burglar he was committing for trial his 
first-born, the heir to his house and his 
lands. 

The pen fell from Sir Charles’s fingers, 
and he stared at the wan face, and wild, 
imploring eyes that stared at him. 

He stared at the lad, and then put his 
hand to his heart, and that heart seemed 
to die within him. 

There was a silence, and a horror fell 
onall. Even Richard Bassett quailed at 
what he had done. 

‘¢ Ah! cruel man! cruel man! ’’ moaned 
the broken father. ‘‘God judge you for 
this—as now I must judge my unhappy 
son. Mr. Bassett, it matters little to 
you what magistrate commits you, and I 
must keep my oath. I am—going—to 
set you an—example, by signing a war- 
rant—”’ 

‘*No, no, no!’’ cried a woman’s voice, 
and Mary Meyrick rushed into the room. 

Every person there thought he knew 
Mary Meyrick; yet she was like a stran- 
ger to them now. There was that in her 
heart at that awful moment which trans- 
figured a handsome but vulgar woman 
into a superior being. Her cheek was 
pale, her black eyes large, and her mel- 
low voice had a magic power. ‘‘ You 
don’t know what you are doing!’ she 


A TERRIBLE 


cried. ‘‘Go no farther, or you will all 
curse the hand that harmed a hair of his 
head; you, most of all, Richard Bas- 
sett.”’ 

Sir Charles, in any other case, would 
have sent her out of the room; but, in 
his misery, he caught at the straw. 

‘¢Speak out, woman,’ he said, ‘‘and 
save the wretched boy, if you can. I see 
no way.”’ 

‘There are things it is not fit to speak 
before all the world. Bid those men go, 
and I’ll open your eyes that stay.” 

Then Richard Bassett foresaw another 
triumph, so he told the constable and his 
man they had better retire for a few min- 
utes, ‘‘while,’? said he, with a sneer, 
‘these wonderful revelations are being 
made.”’ 

When they were gone, Mary turned to 
Richard Bassett, and said ‘‘ Why do you 
want him sent to prison ?—to spite Sir 
Charles here, to stab his heart through 
his son.” 

Sir Charles groaned aloud. 

The woman heard, and thought of 
many things. She flung herself on her 
knees, and seized his hand. ‘‘ Don’t you 
ery, my dear old master ; mine is the only 
heart shall bleed. HE IS NOT YOUR 
SON.”’ 

“ What !’’ cried Sir Charles, in a ter- 
rible voice. 

“«‘ That is no news to me,”’ said Richard. 
‘He is more like the parson than Sir 
Charles Bassett.’’ 

‘For shame ! for shame !”’ cried Mary 
Meyrick. ‘‘Oh, it becomes you to give 
fathers to children when you don’t know 
your own flesh and blood! He is YOUR 
SON, RICHARD BASSETT.”’ 


“My son!” roared Bassett, in utter 
amazement. 

“Ay. I should know ; FoR I Am HIS 
MOTHER. ”’ 

This astounding statement was uttered 
with all the majesty of truth, and when 
she said ‘‘I am his mother,” the voice 
turned tender all in a moment. 

They were all paralyzed ; and, absorbed 
in this strange revelation, did not hear a 
tottering footstep: a woman, pale as a 


TEMPTATION. 205 
corpse, and with eyes glaring large, stood 
among them, all in a moment, as if a 
ghost had risen from the earth. 

It was Lady Bassett. 

At sight of her, Sir Charles awoke 
from the confusion and amazement into 
which Mary had thrown him, and said, 
‘“*Ah—! Bella, do you hear what she 
says, that he is not our son? What, 
then, have you agreed with your servant 
to deceive your husband ?”’ 

Lady Bassett gasped, and tried to 
speak; but before the words would come, 
the sight of her corpse-like face and mis- 
erable agony moved Mary Wells, and she 
snatched the words out of her mouth. 

‘What is the use of questioning her ? 
She knows no more than you do. I done 
it all; and done it for the best. My lady’s 
child died; I hid that from her; for I 
knew it would kill her, and keep you ina 
mad-house. I done for the best: I put 
my live child by her side, and she knew 
no better. As time went on, and the boy 
so dark, she suspected; but know it she 
couldn’t till now. My lady, I am his 
mother, and there stands his cruel fa- 
ther; cruel to me, and cruel to him. But 
don’t you dare to harm him; I’ve got all 
your letters, promising me marriage; I’ll 
take them to your wife and daughter, and 
they shall know it is your own flesh and 
blood you are sending to prison. Oh, I 
am mad to threaten him! my darling, 
speak him fair; he is your father; he 
may have a bit of nature in his heart 
somewhere, though I could never find it.’’ 

The young man put his hands together, 
like an Oriental, and said, “‘ Forgive me,”’ 
then sank at Richard Bassett’s knees. 

Then Sir Charles, himself much shaken, 
took his wife’s arm and led her, trem- 
bling like an aspen leaf, from the room. 

Perhaps the prayers of Reginald and 
the tears of his mother would alone have 
sufficed to soften Richard Bassett, but 
the threat of exposure to his wife and 
daughter did no harm. The three soon 
came to terms. 

Reginald to be liberated on condition 
of going to London by the next train, 
and never setting his foot in that parish 
again. His mother to go with him, and 


206 


see him off to Australia. She solemnly 
pledged herself not to reveal the boy’s 
real parentage to any other soul in the 
world. 

This being settled, Richard Bassett 
called the constable in, and said the 
young gentleman had satisfied him that 
it was a practical joke, though a very 
dangerous one, and he withdrew the 
charge of felony. 

The constable said he must have Sir 
Charles’s authority for that. 

A message was sent to Sir Charles. He 
came. The prisoner was released, and 
Mary Meyrick took his arm sharply, as 
much as to say, ‘‘Out of my hands you 
go no more.”’ 

Before they left the room, Sir Charles, 
who was now master of himself, said, 
with deep feeling, ‘‘ My poor boy, you can 
never be a stranger to me. The affec- 
tion of years cannot be untied in a mo- 
ment. You see now how folly glides into 
crime, and crime into punishment. Take 
this to heart, and never again stray from 
the paths of honor. Lead an honorable 
life; and, if you do, write to me as if I 
was still your father.’’ 

They retired, but Richard Bassett lin- 
gered, and hung his head. 

Sir Charles wondered what this invet- 
erate foe could have to say now. 

At last Richard said, half sullenly, yet 
with a touch of compunction, “‘Sir Charles, 
you have been more generous than I was. 
You have laid me under an obligation.’’ 

Sir Charles bowed loftily. 

“You would double that obligation if 
you would prevail on Lady Bassett to 
keep that old folly of mine secret from 
my wife and daughter. I am truly 
ashamed of it; and, whatever my faults 
may have been, they love and respect 
me.”’ 

‘‘Mr. Bassett,’’ said Sir Charles, ‘‘ my 
son Compton must be told that he is my 
heir ; but no details injurious to you shall 
transpire: you may count on absolute 
secrecy from Lady Bassett and myself.’’ 

‘Sir Charles,’’ said Richard Bassett, 
faltering for a moment, “I am _ very 
much obliged to you, and I begin to be 
sorry we are enemies. Good-morning.”’ 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


The agitation and terror of this scene 
nearly killed Lady Bassett on the spot. 
She lay all that day in a state of utter 
prostration. 

Meantime Sir Charles put this and that 
together, but said nothing. He spoke 
cheerfully and philosophically to his wife— 
said it had been a fearful blow, terrible 
wrench: but it was all for the best ; such 
a son as that would have broken his 
heart before long. 

“Ah, but your wasted affections! ”’ 
groaned Lady Bassett; and her tears 
streamed at the thought. 

Sir Charles sighed ; but said, after a 
while, ‘‘Is affection ever entirely wasted ? 
My love for that young fool enlarged my 
heart. There was a time he did me a 
deal of good.’’ 

But next day, having only herself to 
think of now, Lady Bassett could live no 
longer under the load of deceit. She told 
Sir Charles Mary Meyrick had deceived 
him. ‘* Read. this,’’ she said, “‘and see 
what your miserable wife has done, who 
loved you to madness and crime.’’ 

Sir Charles looked at her, and saw in 
her wasted form and her face that, if he 
did read it, he should kill her; so he 
played the man: he restrained himself by 
a mighty effort, and said, ‘‘ My dear, ex- 
cuse me; but on this matter I have more 
faith in Mary Meyrick’s exactness than in 
yours. Besides, I know your heart, and 
don’t care to be told of vour errors in 
judgment, no, not even by yourself. Sor- 
ry to offend an authoress; but I decline 
to read your book, and, more than that, I 
forbid you the subject entirely for the 
next thirty years, at least. Let by-gones 
be by-gones.”’ 


That eventful morning Mr. Rutland 
called and proposed to Ruperta. She de- 
clined politely, but firmly. 

She told Mrs. Bassett, and Mrs. Bassett 
told Richard in a nervous way, but his an- 
swer surprised her. He said he was very 
glad of it; Ruperta could do better. 

Mrs. Bassett could not resist the pleas- 
ure of telling Lady Bassett. She went 
over on purpose, with her husband’s con- 
sent. 


A TERRIBLE 


Lady Bassett asked to see Ruperta. 

‘‘ By all means,”’ said Richard Bassett, 
graciously. 

On her return to Highmore, Ruperta 
asked leave to go to the Hall every day 
and nurse Lady Bassett. ‘They will let 
her die else,’’ said she. 

Richard Bassett assented to that, too. 

Ruperta, for some weeks, almost lived 
at the Hall, and in this emergency re- 
vealed great qualities. As the malevolent 
small-pox, passing through the gentle 
cow, comes out the sovereign cow-pox, 
so, in this gracious nature, her father’s 
vices turned to their kindred virtues; his 
obstinacy of purpose shone here a noble 
constancy; his audacity became candor, 
and his cunning wisdom. Her intelligence 
saw at once that Lady Bassett was pining 
to death, and a weak-minded nurse would 
be fatal: she was all smiles and bright- 
ness, and neglected no means to encourage 
the patient. 


With this view, she promised to plight | 


her faith to Compton the moment Lady 
Bassett should be restored to health; 
and so, with hopes and smiles, and the 
novelty of a daughter’s love, she fought 
with death for Lady Bassett, and at last 
she won the desperate battle. 

This did Richard Bassett’s daughter for 
her father’s late enemy. 

The grateful husband wrote to Bassett, 
and now acknowledged fis obligation. 

A civil, mock-modest reply from Richard 
Bassett. 

From this things went on step by step, 
till at last Compton and Ruperta, at 
eighteen years of age, were formally 
betrothed. 

Thus the children’s love wore out the 
father’s hate. 

That love, so troubled at the outset, 
left, by degrees, the region of romance, 
and rippled smoothly through green, 
flowery meadows. 

Ruperta showed her lover one more 
phase of girlhood; she, who had been a 
precocious and forward child, and then a 
shy and silent girl, came out now a bright 
and witty young woman, full of vivacity, 
modesty, and sensibility. 

Time cured Compton of his one defect. 


TEMPTATION. 207 
Ruperta stopped growing at fifteen, but 
Compton went slowly on; caught her at 
seventeen, and at nineteen had passed 
her by a head. He won a scholarship 
at Oxford, he rowed in college races, 
and at last in the University race on 
the Thames. 

Ruperta stood, in peerless beauty, dark 
blue from throat to feet, and saw his boat 
astern of his rival, saw it come up with, 
and creep ahead, amid the roars of the 
multitude. When she saw her lover, with 
bare corded arms, as brown as a berry, 
and set teeth, filing his glorious part in 
that manly struggle within eight yards 
of her, she confessed he was not a boy 
now. 

But Lady Bassett accepted no such evi- 
dence: being pestered to let them marry 
at twenty years of age, she clogged her 
consent with one condition—they must 


| live three years at Huntercombe as man 


and wife. 

“No boy of twenty,’’ said she, “cam 
understand a young woman of that age. 
I must be in the house to prevent a single 
misunderstanding between my _ beloved 
children.”’ 

The young people, who both adored her, 
voted the condition reasonable. They 
were married, and a wing of the spacious 
building allotted to them. 

For their sakes let us hope that their 
wedded life, now happily commenced, will 
furnish me no materials for another tale: 
the happiest lives are uneventful. 

The foreign gent recovered his wound, 
but acquired rheumatism and a dislike for 
midnight expeditions. 

Reginald galloped a year or two over 
seven hundred miles of colony, sowing his 
wild oats as he flew, but is now a pros- 
perous squatter, very fond of sleeping in 
the open air. England was not big enough 
for the bold Bohemian. He does very 
well where he is. 

Old Meyrick died, and left his wife a 
little estate in the next county. , Drake 
asked her hand at the funeral. She mar- 
ried him in six months, and migrated to 
the estate in question ; for Sir Charles re- 
fused her a lease of his farm, not choosing 
to have her near him. 


= 


208 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


Her new abode was in the next parish | renew their youth in their children, of 


to her sister’s. 

La Marsh set herself to convert Mary, 
and often exhorted her to penitence; she 
bore this pretty well for some time, being 
overawed by old reminiscences of sisterly 
superiority: but at last her vanity re- 
belled. ‘‘ Repent! and Repent! ’’ cried 
she. ‘‘ Why you be like a cuckoo, all in 
one song. One would think I had been 
and robbed a church. ’Tis all very well 
for you to repent, as led a fastish life at 
starting: but Inever done nothing as [’m 
ashamed on.’’ 


Richard Bassett said one day to 
Wheeler, ‘Old fellow, there is not a 
worse poison than Hate. It has made me 
old before my time. And what does it all 
come to? We might just as well have 
kept quiet ; for my grandson will inherit 
Huntercombe and Bassett, after all—”’ 

‘‘ Thanks to the girl you would not ring 
the bells for.’’ 


Sir Charles and Lady Bassett lead a 
peaceful life after all their troubles, and 


whom Ruperta is one, and as dear as 
any. 

Yet there is a pensive and humble air 
about Lady Bassett, which shows she 
still expiates her fault, though she knows 
it will always be ignored by him for whose 
sake she sinned. 

In summing her up, it may be as well 
to compare this with the unmixed self- 
complacency of Mrs. Drake. 

You men and women, who judge this 
Bella Bassett, be firm, and do not let her 
amiable qualities or her good intentions 
blind you ina plain matter of right and 
wrong: becharitable, and ask yourselves 
how often in your lives you have seen 
yourselves, or any other human being, 
resist a terrible temptation. 

My experience is, that we resist other 
people’s temptations nobly, and succumb 
to our own. 

So let me end with a line of England’s 
gentlest satirist— 


‘‘ Heaven be merciful to us all, sinners as we be.” 


END OF “A TERRIBLE TEMPTATION.” 


A SIMPLETON. 


CHAPTER I. 


A YOUNG lady sat pricking a framed 
canvas in the drawing-room of Kent Villa, 
a mile from Gravesend. She was making, 
at a cost of time and tinted wool, a chair- 
cover, admirably unfit to be sat upon— 
except by some peevish artist bent on 
obliterating discordant colors. To do her 
justice, her mind was not in her work ; 
for she rustled softly with restlessness as 
she sat. and she rose three times in twenty 
minutes, and went to the window. Thence 
she looked down over a trim flowery 
lawn, and long sloping meadows, on to 
the silver Thames, alive with steamboats 
plowing, white sails bellying, and great 
ships carrying to and fro the treasures of 
the globe. From this fair landscape and 
epitome of commerce she retired each 
time with listless disdain. She was wait- 
ing for somebody. 

Yet she was one of those whom few 
men care to keep waiting. Rosa Lusignan 
was a dark but dazzling beauty, with 
coal-black hair and glorious dark eyes 
that seemed to beam with soul all day 
long; her eyebrows, black, straightish, 
and rather thick, would have been ma- 
jestic, and too severe, had the other feat- 
ures followed suit; but her black brows 
were succeeded by long silky lashes, a 
sweet oval face, two pouting lips studded 
with ivory, and an exquisite chin, as 
feeble as any man could desire in the 
partner of his bosom. Person straight, 
elastic, and rather tall. Mind, nineteen. 


Accomplishments, numerous: a_ poor 
French scholar, a worse German, a worst 
English; an admirable dancer, an inac- 
curate musician, a good rider, a bad 
draughtswoman ; a bad hair-dresser, at 
the mercy of her maid ; a hot theologian, 
knowing nothing; a sorry accountant, no 
housekeeper, no seamstress, a fair em- 
broideress, a capital geographer, and no 
cook. 

Collectively, namely, mind and body, 
the girl we kneel to. 

This ornamental member of society now 
glanced at the clock once more, and then 
glided to the window for the fourth time. 
She peeped at the side a good while with 
superfluous slyness, or shyness; and 
presently she drew back, blushing crim- 
son: then she peeped again, still more 
furtively, then retired softly to her frame, 
and, for the first time, set to work in 
earnest. As she plied her harpoon, smil- 
ing now, the large and vivid blush that 
had suffused her face and throat turned 
from carnation to rose, and melted away 
slowly but perceptibly, and ever so 
sweetly ; and somebody knocked at the 
street-door. 

The blow seemed to drive her deeper 
into her work. She leaned over it, grace- 
ful as a willow, and so absorbed she could 
not even see the door of the room open, 
and Dr. Staines come in. 

All the better; her not perceiving that 
slight addition to her furniture gives me 
a moment to describe him. 

A young man, five feet eleven inches 

(209) 


210 WORKS 
high, very square-shouldefed and deep- 
chested, but so symmetrical and light in 
his movements that his size hardly struck 
one at first. He was smooth shaved, all 
but a short, thick auburn whisker; his 
hair was brown. His features no more 
than comely; the brow full; the eyes 
wide apart and deep-seated; the lips 
rather thin, but expressive ; the chin solid 
and square. It was a face of power, and 
capable of harshness, but leavened by an 
eye of an unusual color, between hazel 
and gray, and wonderfully tender. In 
complexion he could not compare with 
Rosa; his cheek was clear but pale; for 
few young men had studied night and 
day.so constantly. Though but twenty- 
eight years of age, he was literally a 
learned physician, deep in hospital prac- 
tice, deep in books, especially deep in 
German science—too often neglected or 
skimmed by English physicians. He had 
delivered a course of lectures at a learned 
university with general applause. 

As my reader has divined, Rosa was 
preparing the comedy of a cool reception ; 
but, looking up, she saw his pale cheek 
tinted with a lover’s beautiful joy at the 
bare sight of her, and his soft eye so 
divine with love that she had not the 
heart to chill him. She gave him her 
hand kindly, and smiled brightly on him 
instead of remonstrating. She lost noth- 
ing by it; for the very first thing he did 
was to excuse himself eagerly. ‘<I am 
behind time; the fact is, just as I was 
mounting my horse, a poor man came to 
the gate to consult me. Hehad a terrible 
disorder I have sometimes succeeded in 
arresting. Jl attack the cause instead of 
the symptoms, which is the old practice, 
and so that detained me. You forgive 
me?’’ 

.Otscourse, .. Poor man! Only. you 
said you wanted to see papa, and he al- 
ways goes out at two.”’ 

When she had been betrayed into say- 
ing this, she drew in suddenly, and blushed 
with a pretty consciousness. 

“Then don’t let me lose another min- 
ute,’’ said the lover. ‘‘ Have you prepared 
him for—for what I am going to have the 
audacity to say ?”’ 


a 


OF CHARLES READE. 


Bosa answered, with some hesitation, 
‘‘T must have, a little.. When I refused 
Col. Bright—you need not devour my 
hand quite; he is forty.”’ 

Her sentence ended; and away went 
the original topic, and grammatical se- 
quence along with it. Christopher Staines 
recaptured them both. ‘‘ Yes, dear, when 
you refused Col. Bright— ”’ 

*‘ Well, papa was astonished ; for every- 
body says the colonel is a most eligible 
match. Don’t you hate that expression ? 
Ido. Eligible.’’ 

Christopher made due haste, and re- 
captured her. ‘‘ Yes, love, your papa. 
said— ”’ 

‘‘} don’t think I will tell you. Heasked 
me was there anybody else; and of course 
lisaid: hbase 

° Ohane 

‘*Oh, that is nothing! I had not time 
to make up my mind to tell the truth. I 
was taken by surprise; and you know 
one’s first impulse is to fib—about that.’’ 

‘But did you really deceive him ?”’ 

‘“No. I blushed; and he caught me: 
so he said, ‘ Come now, there was.’ ”’ 

«And you said, ‘ Yes, there is,’ like a 
brave girl as you are.”’ 

“What! plump like that? No; I was 
frightened out of my wits, like a brave 
girlas Iam not, and said I should never 
marry any one he could disapprove ; and 
then—oh ! then I believe I began to cry. 
Christopher, I’ll tell you something. I 
find people leave off teasing you when you 
ery—gentlemen, I mean. Ladies go on 
all the more. So then dear papa kissed 
me, and told me I must not be imprudent 
and throw myself away, that was all; 
and I promised him I never would. I 
said he would be sure to approve my 
choice, and he said he hoped so. And so 
he will.’’ ) 

Dr. Staines looked thoughtful, and said 
he hoped so too. ‘‘ But now it comes to 
the point of asking him for such a treas- 
ure, I feel my deficiencies.”’ 

‘Why, what deficiencies? You are 
young and handsome and good, and ever 
so much cleverer than other people. You 
have only to ask for me, and insist on 
having me. Come, dear, go and get it 


A SIMPLETON. 


over.’’ She added, mighty coolly, ‘“‘ There 
is nothing so dreadful as suspense.”’ 

<‘T’ll go this minute,’”’ said he, and 
took a step toward the door; but he 
turned, and in a moment was at her 
knees. He took both her hands in his, 
and pressed them to his beating bosom, 
while his beautiful eyes poured love into 
hers pointblank. ‘‘ May I tell him you 
love me? Oh! I know you cannot love 
me as I love you; but I may say you love 
me a little, may lnot? That will go far- 
ther with him than any thing else. May 
I, Rosa, may I ?—a little ?”’ 

His passion mastered her. She drooped 
her head sweetly on his shoulder, and 
murmured, ‘‘ You know you may, my 
own. Who would not love you? ”’ 

He parted lingeringly from her, then 
marched away, bold with love and hope, 
to demand her hand in marriage. 

Rosa leaned back in her chair, and 
quivered a little with new emotions. 
Christopher was right: she was not ca- 
pable of loving like him; but still the ac- 
tual contact of so strong a passion made 
her woman’s nature vibrate. A dewy 
tear hung on the fringes of her long 
lashes; and she leaned back in her chair 
and fluttered a while. 

That emotion, almost new to her, soon 
yielded, in her girlish mind, to a compla- 
cent languor, and that, in its turn, to a 
soft reverie. So she was going to be 
married! ‘l'o be mistress of a house, set- 
tle in London (that she had quite deter- 
mined long ago); be able to go out into 
the streets all alone, to shop or visit; 
have a gentleman all her own, whom she 
could put her finger on any moment, and 
make him take her about, even to the 
opera and the theater; to give dinner- 
parties her own self, and even a little ball 
once in a way; to buy whatever dresses 
she thought proper, instead of being crip- 
pled by an allowance; have the legal 
right of speaking’ first in society, even to 
gentlemen rich in ideas but bad starters, 
instead of sitting mum-chance and mock- 
modest ; to be mistress instead of miss— 
contemptible title ; to be a woman instead 
of a girl; and all this rational liberty, 


domestic power, and social dignity were | 


211 


to be obtained by merely wedding a dear 
fellow who loved her, and was so nice: 
and the bright career to. be ushered in 
with several delights, each of them dear 
to a girl’s very soul—presents from all 
her friends; as many beautiful new 
dresses as if she was changing her body 
or her hemisphere instead of her name; 
éclat ; going to church, which isa good 
English girl’s theater of display and tem- 
ple of vanity, and there tasting delight- 
ful publicity and whispered admiration, 
ina heavenly long veil, which she could 
not wear even once if she remained sing'le. 

This bright variegated picture of holy 
wedlock and its essential features, as re- 
vealed to young ladies by feminine tra- 
dition, though not enumerated in the 
Book of Common Prayer composed by 
males, so entranced her that time flew by 
unheeded, and Christopher Staines came 
back from her father. His step was 
heavy: he looked pale and deeply dis- 
tressed ; then stood like a statue, and 
did not come close to her, but cast 
a piteous look, and gasped out one 
word, that seemed almost to choke him— 
‘¢ REFUSED ! ”’ 

Miss Lusignan rose from her chair, and 
looked almost wildly at him with her 
great eyes. ‘“ Refused?’’ said she 
faintly. 

“Yes,” said he sadly. ‘“‘ Your father 
is a man of business ; and he took a mere 
business view of our love: he asked me 
directly what provision I could make for 
his daughter and her children. Well, I 
told him I had three thousand pounds in 
the Funds, and a good profession ; and 
then I said I had youth, health, and love, 
boundless love, the love that can do or 
suffer, the love that can conquer the 
world.”’ 

‘* Dear Christopher ? 
he say to all that ? ’’ 

‘“‘He ignored it entirely. There, [ll 
give you his very words. He said, ‘In 
that case, Dr. Staines, the simple question 
is, what does your profession bring you 
in per annum ?’”’ , 

“Oh! There, I always hated arith- 
metic ; and now I abominate it.’’ 

“Then I was obliged to confess I had 


And what could 


212 


scarcely received a hundred pounds in 
fees this year; but 1 told him the reason: 
this is such a small district, and all the 
ground occupied. London, I said, was my 
sphere.’’ 

‘* And so it is,’’ said Rosa eagerly; for 
this jumped with her own little designs. 
‘‘Genius is wasted in the country. Be- 
sides, whenever anybody worth curing is 
ill down here, they always send to Lon- 
don for a doctor.”’ 

‘“‘T told him so, dearest,’’ said the 
lover. ‘“‘But he answered me directly, 
then I must set up in London; and, as 
soon aS my books showed an income to 
keep a wife and servants and children, 
and insure my life for five thousand 
pounds— ”’ 

“Oh, that is so like papa! He is di- 
rector of an insurance company; so all 
the world must insure their lives.’’ 

“ No, dear, he was quite right there ; 
professional incomes are most precarious. 
Death spares neither young nor old, 
neither warm hearts nor cold. I should 
be no true physician if I could not see my 
own mortality.’’ He hung his head, and 
pondered a moment ; then went on Sadly ; 
‘« Tt all comes to this: until | have a pro- 
fessional income of eight hundred a year 
at least, he will not hear of our marry- 
ing: and the cruel thing is, he will not 
even consent to an engagement. But,’’ 
said the rejected, with a look of sad anx- 
iety, ‘you will wait for me without that, 
dear Rosa ? ” 

She could give him that comfort; and 
she gave it him with loving earnestness. 
““Of course I will; and it shall not be 
very long. While you are making your 
fortune to please papa, I will keep fretting 
and pouting and crying till he sends for 
you.”’ 

“Bless you, dearest. Stop! not to 
make yourself ill ! not for all the world.’’ 
There spoke the lover and the physician. 

He came, all gratitude, to her side ; and 
they sat, hand in hand, comforting each 
other; indeed, parting was such sweet 
sorrow that they sat, and very close to 
one another, till Mr. Lusignan, who 
thought five minutes quite enough for 
rational beings to take leave in, walked 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


into the room and surprised them. At 
sight of his gray head and iron-gray eye- 
brows, Christopher Staines started up 
and looked confused: he thought some 
apology necessary, so he faltered out, 
‘‘Horgive me, sir; itis a bitter parting 
to me, you may be sure.”’ 

Rosa’s bosom heaved at these simple 
words. She flew to her father, and cried. 
“Oh, papa! papa! you were never cruel 
before,’’ and hid her burning face on his 
shoulder; and then burst out crying, 
partly for Christopher, partly because 
she was now ashamed of herself for hav- 
ing taken a young man’s part so openly. 

Mr. Lusignan looked sadly discomposed 
at this outburst: she had taken him by 
his weak point; he told her so. ‘ Now, 
Rosa,’’ said he, rather peevishly, ‘‘ you 
know I hate a noise.”’ . 

Rosa had actually forgotten that trait 
for a single moment; but, being reminded 
of it, she reduced her sobs in the prettiest 
way, not to offend a tender parent who 
could not bear noise. Under this homely 
term, you must know he included all 
scenes, disturbances, rumpuses, passions, 
and expected all men, women, and things 
in Kent Villa to go smoothly, or go else- 
where. 

“‘Come, young people,’’ said he, ‘*‘ don’t 
make a disturbance. Where’s the griev- 
ance? Have I said he should never mar- 
ry you? Have Ef forbidden him to cor- 
respond, or even to call, say twice a year? 
All I say is, no marriage, nor contract of 
marriage, until there is an income.’’ Then 
he turned to Christopher. ‘‘ Now, if you 
can't make an income without her, how 
could you make one with her, weighed 
down by the load of expenses a wife en- 
tails? JI know her better than you do. 
She is a good girl, but rather luxurious 
and self-indulgent. She is not cut out for 
a poor man’s wife; and pray don’t go 
and fancy that nobody loves my child but 
you. Mine is not so hot as yours, of 
course; but believe me, sir, it is less self- 
ish. You would expose her to poverty 
and misery; but Isay no. It is my duty 
to protect her from all chance of them; 
and, in doing it, 1 am as much your friend 
as hers, if you could but see it. Come, 


A SIMPLETON. 


Dr. Staines, be a man, and see the world 
as itis. I have told you how to earn my 
daughter’s hand and my esteem: you 
must gain both or neither.’’ 

Dr. Staines was never quite deaf to rea- 
son: he now put his hand to his brow, 
and said, with a sort of wonder and piti- 
ful dismay, ‘‘ My love for Rosa selfish ! 
Sir, your words are bitter and hard.”’ 
Then, after a struggle, and with rare and 
touching candor, ‘‘ Ay, but so are bark 
and steel; yet they are good medicines.”’ 
Then, with a great glow in his heart, and 
tears in his eyes, ‘“‘ My darling shall not 
be a poor man’s wife—she who would 
adorn a coronet, ay, or acrown. Good- 
by, Rosa, for the present.’? He darted 
to her, and kissed her hand with all his 
soul. ** Oh, the sacrifice of leaving you!”’ 
he faltered: ‘‘the very world is dark to 
me without you. Ah, well, | must earn 
the right to come again!’ He sum- 
moned all his manhood, and marched to 
the door. There he seemed to turn 
calmer all of a sudden, and said, firmly 
yet humbly, ‘‘Tll try and show you, sir, 
what love can do.”’ 

‘And I’ll show you what love can suf- 
fer,’ said Rosa, folding her beautiful 
arms superbly. 

It was not in her to have shot such a 
bolt except in imitation ; yet how prompt- 
ly the mimic thunder came, and how 
grand the beauty looked, with her dark 
brows and flashing eyes and folded arms ! 
much grander and more inspired than 
poor Staines, who had only furnished the 
idea. 

But between these two figures, swelling 
with emotion, the representative of com- 
mon sense, Lusignan pére, stood cool and 
impassive: he shrugged his shoulders, 
and looked on both lovers as a couple of 
ranting novices he was saving from each 
other and almshouses. 

For all that, when the lover had torn 
himself away, papa’s composure was sud- 
denly disturbed by a misgiving. He 
stepped hastily to the stair-head, and 
gave it vent. ‘‘Dr. Staines,’’ said he, in 
a loud whisper (Staines was half-way 
down the stairs: he stopped), “I trust 
to you, aS a gentleman, not to mention 


213 
this ; it will never transpire here. What- 
ever we do, no noise! ”’ 


CHAPTER II. 


Rosa LUSIGNAN set herself pining, as 
she had promised, and she did it discreetly 
for so young a person; she was never 
peevish, but always sad and listless. By 
this means she did not anger her parent, 
but only made him feel she was unhappy, 
and the house she had hitherto brightened 
exceeding’ dismal. 

By degrees this noiseless melancholy 
undermined the old gentleman; and he 
wellnigh tottered. 

But one day, calling suddenly on a 
neighbor with six daughters, he heard 
peals of laughter, and found Rosa taking ° 
her full share of the senseless mirth. She 
pulled up short at sight of him, and 
colored high ; but it was too late, for he 
launched a knowing look at her on the 
spot, and muttered something about seven 
foolish virgins. 

He took the first opportunity when they 
were alone, and told her he was glad to 
find she was only dismal at home. 

But Rosa had prepared for him. ‘‘One 
can be loud without being gay at heart,”’ 
said she, with a lofty, languid air. <I 
have not forgotten your last words to 
him. We were to hide our broken hearts 
from the world. I try to obey you, dear 
papa ; but, if Lhad my way, I would never 
go into the world at all. I have but one 
desire now—to end my days in a con- 
vent.”’ 

‘Please begin them first. A convent! 
Why, you’d turn it out of window. You 
are no more fit to be a nun than—a 
pauper.”’ 

Not having foreseen this facer, Rosa had 
nothing ready: so she received it with a 
sad, submissive, helpless sigh, as one who 
should say, ‘‘Hit me, papa: I have no 
friend now.’’ So then he was sorry he 
had been so clever; and, indeed, there is 


214 


one provoking thing about ‘‘a woman’s 
weakness,’’ it is invincible. 

The next minute what should come but 
a long. letter from Dr. Staines, detailing 
his endeavors to purchase a practice in 
London, and his ill success. The letter 
spoke the language of love and hope, but 
the facts were discouraging ; and, indeed, 
a touching sadness pierced through the 
veil of the brave words. 

Rosa read it again and again, and cried 
over it before her father, to discourage 
him in his heartless behavior. 


About ten days after this, something 
occurred that altered her mood. 

She became grave and thoughtful, but 
no longer lugubrious. She seemed desir- 
ous to atone to her father for having 
disturbed his cheerfulness. She smiled 
affectionately on him, and often sat on a 
stool at his knee, and glided her hand into 
his. 

He was not a little pleased, and said to 
himself, “‘ She is coming round to common 
sense.”’ 

Now, on the contrary, she was farther 
from it than ever. 

At last he got theclew. One afternoon 
he met Mr. Wyman coming out of the 
vila. Mr. Wyman was the consulting 
surgeon of that part. 

‘“ What ! anybody ill?’ said Mr. Lusig- 
nan: ‘‘ one of the servants ? ”’ 

‘*No, it is Miss Lusignan.”’ 

“Why, what is the matter with her?” 

Wyman hesitated. ‘Oh, nothing very 
alarming ! Would you mind asking her ? ”’ 

ce Why?” 

‘*The fact is, she requested me not to 
tell you—made me promise.”’ 

** And I insist upon your telling me.”’ 

‘‘T think you are quite right, sir, as her 
father. Well, she is troubled with a little 
spitting of blood.’’ 

Mr. Lusignan turned pale. ‘‘ My child! 
spitting of blood! God forbid !”’ 


“Oh, do not alarm yourself! It is 
nothing serious.”’ 
‘‘ Don’t tell me,’’ said the father. “It 


is always serious. 
from me! ’’ 
Masking his agitation for the time, he 


And she kept this 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


inquired how often it had occurred—this 
erave symptom. 

‘*Three or four times this last month. 
But I may as well tell you at once, I have 
examined her carefully, and I do not 
think it is from the lungs.”’ 

‘*Hrom the throat, then ?”’ 

‘“No, from the liver. Everything points 
to that organ as the seat of derangement: 
not that there is any lesion; only a tend- 
ency to congestion. I am treating her 
accordingly, and have no doubt of the re- 
sult.”’ 

“Who is the ablest physician here- 
abouts ? ’’? asked Lusignan abruptly. 

‘*Dr. Snell, I think.’’ 

‘‘ Give me his address.”’ 

“T’ll write to him if you like, and ap- 
point a consultation.’’ He added, with 
vast but rather sudden alacrity, ‘ It will 
be a great satisfaction to my own mind.”’ 

‘“Then send to him, if you please, and 
let him be here to-morrow morning ; if 
not, 1 shall take her to London for advice 
at once.”’ | 

On this understanding they parted ; 
and Lusignan went at once to his daugh- 
ter. ‘“‘Oh, my child!’ said he, deeply 
distressed, ‘‘how -could you hide this 
from ANG 

‘‘Hide what, papa?’ said the girl, 
looking the picture of unconsciousness. 

“That you have been spitting blood.’’ 


‘“Who told you that?’ said she 
sharply. 

‘Wyman; he is attending you.”’ 

Rosa colored with anger. ‘ Chatter- 


box! He promised me faithfully not to.”’ 

‘But why, in Heaven’s name? What! 
would you trust this terrible thing toa 
stranger, and hide it from your poor 
father ? ’’ 

‘<Yes,’’ replied Rosa quietly. 

The old man would not scold her now: 
he only said sadly, ‘‘ I see how it is: be- 
cause I will not let you marry poverty, 
you think I do not love you.’’ And he 
sighed. 

““Oh, papa! the idea !”’ said Rosa. “Of 
course I know you love me. It was not 
that, you dear, darling, foolish papa. 
There, if you must know, it was because 


las did not want you to be distressed. I 


A SIMPLETON. 


thought I might get better with a little 
physic ; and if not, why then I thought, 
‘Papa is an old man; la! .I dare say I 
shall last his time; ’ and so, why should 
I poison your latter days with worrying 
about me ?”’ 

Mr. Lusignan stared at her, and his lip 
quivered ; but he thought the trait hardly 
consistent with her superficial ‘character. 
He could not help saying, half-sadly, half- 
bitterly, ‘‘ Well, but of course you have 
told Dr. Staines.”’ 

Rosa opened her beautiful eyes like two 
suns. “Of course I have done nothing of 
the sort. He has enough to trouble him 
without that. Poor fellow! there he is, 
worrying and striving to make his fort- 
une and gain your esteem: ‘ they go to- 
gether,’ you know you told him so.” 
(Young cats will scratch when least ex- 
pected.) ‘‘And for me to go and tell him 
Iam indanger! Why, he would go wild ; 
he would think of nothing but me and my 
health; he would never make his fortune ; 
and so then, even when I am gone, he 
will never get a wife, because he has only 
got genius and goodness and three thou- 
sand pounds. No, papa, I have not told 
poor Christopher. I may tease those I 
love; I have been teasing you this ever 
so long: but frighten them and make 
them miserable? No.’’ 

And here, thinking of the anguish that 
was perhaps in store for those she loved, 
she wanted to cry ; it almost choked her 
not to. But she fought it bravely down: 
she reserved her tears for lighter occa- 
sions and less noble sentiments. 

Her father held out his arms to her ; 
she ran her footstool to him, and sat 
nestling to his heart. 

‘‘ Please forgive me my misconduct. I 
have not been a dutiful daughter ever 
since you— But now I will. Kiss me, 
my own papa. There! Now we are as 
we always were.”’ 

Then she purred to him on every possi- 
ble topic but the one that now filled his 
parental heart, and bade him good-night 
at last with a cheerful smile. 

Wyman was exact; and ten minutes 
afterward Dr. Snell drove up in a carriage 
and pair. He was intercepted in the hall 


215 


by Wyman, and, after a few minutes’ 
conversation, presented to Mr. Lusig- 
nan. 

The father gave vent to his paternal 
anxiety in a few simple but touching 
words, and was proceeding to state -the 
symptoms as he had gathered them from 
his daughter; but Dr. Snell interrupted 
him politely, and said he had heard the 
principal symptoms from Mr. Wyman. 
Then, turning to the latter, he said, 
“We had better proceed to examine the 
patient.”’ 

‘‘ Certainly,” said Mr. Lusignan. ‘‘ She 
is in the drawing-room; ’’ and he led the 
way, and was about to enter the room, 
when Wyman informed him that it was 
against etiquette for him to be present at 
the examination. 

‘¢Oh)) very well !’* said) he. °.7Yes,, Il 
see the propriety of that. But oblige me 


by asking her if she has anything on her 


mind.”’ 
Dr. Snell bowed a lofty assent; for to 


receive a hint from a layman was to con- 


fer a favor on him. 

The men of science were closeted full 
half an hour with the patient. She was 
too beautiful to be slurred over, even by a 
busy doctor: he felt her pulse, looked at 
her tongue, and listened attentively to 
her lungs, to her heart, and to the organ 
suspected by Wyman. He left her at 


last with a kindly assurance that the case 


was perfectly curable. 


At the door they were met by the anx- 
ious father, who came, with throbbing 


heart, and asked the doctor’s verdict. 

He was coolly informed that could not 
be given until the consultation had taken 
place; the result of that consultation 
would be conveyed to him. 


«And pray why can’t I be present at. 
The grounds on which 


the consultation ? 


A 


two able men agree or disagree must be 


well worth listening to.” 

‘“No doubt,”’ said Dr. Snell; “but,” 
with a superior smile, ‘‘my dear sir, it is 
not the etiquette.’ 

“Oh, very well!’ said lLusignan. 
But he muttered, ‘‘So, then, a father is 
nobody.”’ 


And this unreasonable person retired to 


216 


his study, miserable, and gave up the din- 
ing-room to the consultation. 

They soon rejoined him. 

Dr. Snell’s opinion was communicated 
by Wyman. ‘‘I am happy to tell you, 
that Dr. Snell agrees with me entirely ; 
the lungs are not affected, and the liver 
is congested, but not diseased.’’ 

“Is that so, Dr. Snell?’’ asked Lusig- 
nan anxiously. 

‘It is so, sir.”’ He added, ‘‘ The treat- 
ment has beén submitted ,to me, and I 
quite approve it.’’ 

He then asked for a pen and paper, and 
wrote a prescription. He assured Mr. 
Lusignan that the case had no extraor- 
dinary feature whatever ; he was not to 
-alarm himself. Dr. Snell then drove 
away, leaving the parent rather puzzled, 
but, on the whole, much comforted. 

And here I must reveal an extraordi- 
nary circumstance— 

Wyman’s treatment was by drugs. 

Dr. Snell’s was by drugs. 

Dr. Snell, as you have seen, entirely 
approved Wyman’s treatment. 

His own had nothing in common with 
it. The arctic and the antarctic poles are 
not farther apart than was his prescrip- 
tion from the prescription he thoroughly 
approved. 

Amiable science! In which complete 
diversity of practice did not interfere with 
perfect uniformity of opinion. 

All this was kept from Dr. Staines ; 
and he was entirely occupied in trying to 
get a position that might lead to fortune 
and satisfy Mr. Lusignan. He called on 
every friend he had, to inquire where 
there was an opening. He walked miles 
and miles in the best quarters of London, 
looking for an opening; he let it be 
known in many quarters that he would 
give a good premium to any physician 
who was about to retire, and would intro- 
duce him to his patients. 

No ; he could hear of nothing. 

Then, after a great struggle with him- 
self,he called upon his uncle, Philip Staines, 
a retired M.D., to see if he would do any- 
thing for him. He left this to the last, for 
avery good reason; Dr. Philip was an irri- 
table old bachelor, who had assisted most 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


of his married relatives ; but, finding no 
bottom to the well, had turned rusty and 
crusty, and now was apt to administer 
kicks instead of checks to all who were 
near and dear to him. However, Chris- 
topher was the old gentleman’s favorite, 
and was now desperate ; so he mustered 
courage and went. He was graciously 
recelved—warmly indeed. This gave him 
great hopes, and he told his tale. 

The old bachelor sided with Mr. Lusig- 
nan. ‘‘ What!’ said he, “do you want 
to marry, and propagate pauperism? I 
thought you had more sense. Confound 
it all! I had just one nephew whose 
knock at my street door did not make 
me tremble; he was a bachelor and a 
thinker, and came for a friendly chat ; 
the rest are married men, highway- 
men, who come to say, ‘Stand and 
deliver ;’ and now even you want to 
join the giddy throng. Well, don’t ask 
me to have any hand in it. You are a 
man of promise; and you might as well 
hang a millstone around your neck as a 
wife. Marriage is a greater mistake than 
ever now; the women dress more, and 
manage worse. I met your cousin Jack 
the other day and his wife, with seventy 
pounds on her back, and next door to 
paupers. No; while you are a bachelor, 
like me, you are my favorite, and down 
in my will fora lump. Once marry, and 
you join the noble army of footpads, 
leeches, vultures, paupers, gone coons, 
and babblers about brats, and I disown 
OL. e 

There was no hope from old Crusty. 
Christopher left him, snubbed and heart- 
sick. At last he met a sensible man, who 
made him see there was no short cut in 
that profession. He must be content to 
play the up-hill game; must settle in 
some good neighborhood, marry if pos- 
sible, since husbands and fathers of fam- 
ilies prefer married physicians ; and so be 
poor at thirty, comfortable at forty, and 
rich at fifty—perhaps. 

Then Christopher came down to his 
lodgings at Gravesend, and was very un- 
happy; and, after some days of misery, 
he wrote a letter to Rosa in a moment of 
impatience, despondency, and passion. 


A SIMPLETON. 


Rosa Lusignan got worse and worse. 
The slight but frequent hemorrhage was 
a drain upon her system, and weakened 
her visibly. She began to lose her rich 
complexion, and sometimes looked almost 
sallow; anda slight circle showed itself 
under her eyes. These symptoms were 
unfavorable; nevertheless Dr. Snell and 
Mr. Wyman accepted them cheerfully, as 
fresh indications that nothing was affected 
but the liver. They multiplied and varied 
their prescriptions ; the malady ignored 
those prescriptions, and went steadily on. 
Mr. Lusignan was terrified, but helpless ; 
Rosa resigned and reticent. 

But it was not in human nature that a 
girl of this age could always, and at all 
hours, be mistress of herself. One even- 
ing in particular she stood before the glass 
in the drawing-room, and looked at her- 
self a long time with horror. ‘“‘Is that 
Rosa Lusignan ?’”’ said she aloud. ‘‘Itis 
her ghost.’’ 

A deep groan startled her. She turned ; 
it was her father. She thought he was 
fast asleep; and so indeed he had been: 
but he was just awaking, and heard his 
daughter utter her real mind. It wasa 
thunder-clap. ‘‘ Oh, my child ! what shall 
Ido? ’’ he cried. 

Then Rosa was taken by surprise in her 
turn. Shespoke out. ‘‘Send for a great 
physician, papa. Don’t let us deceive our- 
selves; it is our only chance.”’ 

*‘T will ask Mr. Wyman to get a physi- 
cian down from London.”’ 

“No, no; that is no use; they will put 
their heads together; and he will say 
whatever Mr. Wyman tells him. La, 
papa! a clever man like you not to see 
what a cheat that consultation was! 
Why, from what you told me, one can 
see it was managed so that Dr. Snell could 
not possibly have an opinion of his own. 
No; no more echoes of Mr. Chatterbox. 
If you really want to cure me, send for 
Christopher Staines.”’ 

‘“Dr. Staines! He is very young.”’ 

‘* But he is very clever, and he is not an 
echo. He won’t care how many doctors 
he contradicts when I am in danger. 
Papa, it is your child’s one chance.’’ 

** Tl try it,’’ said the old man eagerly. 


217 


‘“* How confident you look ! your color has 
come back. It is an inspiration. Where 
is e:?:*” 

‘‘] think by this time he must be at his 
lodgings in Gravesend. Send to him to- 
morrow morning.”’ 

“NotI. TPll go to him to-night. 
only a mile, and a fine clear night.’’ 

‘*My own, good, kind papa! Ah, well, 
come what may, I have lived long enough 
to be loved... Yes, dear papa, save me. I 
am very young to die; and he loves me 
so dearly.”’ . 

The old man bustled away, to put on 
something warmer for his night walk; 
and Rosa leaned back, and the tears 
welled out of her eyes, now he was gone. 

Before she had recovered her compos- 
ure, a letter was brought her; and this 
was the letter from Christopher Staines 
alluded to already. 

She took it from the servant with 
averted head, not wishing it to be seen 
she had been crying ; and she started at 
the handwriting. It seemed such a coin- 
cidence that it should come just as she 
was sending for him. 


tis 


‘“MY OWN BELOVED Rosa—lI now write 
to tell you, with a heavy heart, that all is 
vain. J cannot make or purchase a con- 
nection, except as others do, by time and 
patience. Being a bachelor is quite 
against a young physician. If 1 had a 
a wife, and such a wife as you, I should 
be sure to get on. You would increase 
my connection very soon. What, then, 
lies before us? I see but two things: to 
wait till we are old, and our pockets are 
filled, but our hearts chilled or soured : 
or else to marry at once, and climb the 
hill together. If you love me as I love 
you, you will be saving till the battle is 
over; and I feel I could find energy and 
fortitude for both. Your father, who 
thinks so much of wealth, can surely set- 
tle something on you ; and I am not too 
poor to furnish a house and start fair. I 
am not quite obscure—my lectures have 
given me a name; and to you, my own 
jove, I hope I may say that I know more 
than many of my elders, thanks to good 
schools, good methods, a genuine love of 


218 


my noble profession, and a tendency to 
study from my childhood. Will you not 
risk something on my ability? If not, 
God help me! for I shall lose you; and 
what is life, or fame, or wealth, or any 
mortal thing to me, without you. I can- 
not accept your father’s decision: you 
must decide my fate. 

“You see, [ have kept away from you 
until lean dosono more. All this time the 
world to me has seemed to want the sun ; 
and my heart pines and sickens for one 
sight of you. Darling Rosa, pray let me 
look at your face once more. 

“When this reaches you, I shall be at 
your gate. Let me see you, though but 
for a moment, and let me hear my fate 
from no lips but yours. 

‘¢My own love, 
“* Your heart-broken lover, 
‘‘ CHRISTOPHER STAINES.”’ 


This letter stunned her at first. Her 
mind of late had been turned away from 
love to such stern realities. Now she be- 
gan to be sorry she had not told him. 
‘* Poor thing !”’ she said to herself ; “he 
little thinks that now all is changed. 
Papa, I sometimes think, would deny me 
nothing now. It is I who would not marry 
him, to be buried by him in a month or 
two. Poor Christopher ! ”’ 

The next moment she started up in dis- 
may. Why, her father would miss hin. 

No, perhaps catch him waiting for her. 
What would he think? What would 
Christopher think? That she had shown 
her papa his letter. 

She rang the bell hard. The footman 
came. 

‘Send Harriet to me this instant. 
and ask papa to come to me!”’ 

Then she sat down and dashed off a line 
to Christopher. This was for Harriet to 
take out tohim. Anything better than for 
Christopher to be caught doing what was 
wrong. ys 

The footman came back first. ‘If you 
please, miss, master has gone out.’’ 

‘*Run after him, the road to Graves- 
end.”’ 

«Ves, miss.’’ 

‘“No. It is no use. 


Oh! 


Never mind.”’ 


But how was this? 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


‘° Yes, muiss.”’ 

Then Harriet came in. 
me, miss ? ”’ 

«Yes. No, never mind now.”’ 

She was afraid todo anything, for fear 
of making matters worse. She went to 
the window and stood looking anxiously 
out, with her hands working. Presently 
she uttered a little scream, and shrank 
away to the sofa. She sank down on it, 
half-sitting, half-lying, hid her face in her 
hands, and waited. 


** Did you want 


Staines, with a lover’s impatience, had 
been more than an hour at the gate, or 
walking up or down close by it, his heart 
now burning with hope, now freezing with 
fear that she would decline a meeting on 
these terms. 

At last the postman came, and then he 
saw his mistake; but now in a few min- 
utes Rosa would have his letter, and then 
he should soon know whether she would 
come or not. He looked up at the draw- 
ing-room windows. They were full of 
light. She was there, in all probability. 
Yet she did not come to them. But why 
should she, if she was coming out? 

He walked up and down the road. She 
did not come. His heart drooped; and 
perhaps it was owing to this that he al- 
most ran against a gentleman who was 
coming the other way. The moon shone 
bright on both faces. in 

‘‘ Dr. Staines !’’ said Mr. Lusignan, sur- 
prised. Christopher uttered an ejacula- 
tion more eloquent than words. 

They stared at each other. 

«You were coming to see us? ”’ 

«¢ N—no,’’ stammered Christopher. 

Lusignan thought that odd; however, 
he said, politely, ‘‘ No matter ; it is fort- 
unate. Would you mind coming in?”’ 

“*No.”’ faltered Christopher, and stared 
at him ruefully, puzzled more and more 3 
but beginning to think, after all, it might 
be a casual meeting. 

They entered the gate; and in one mo- 
ment he saw Rosa at the window, and 
she saw him. 

Then he altered his opinion again. 
Rosa had sent her father out to him. 
The old man did 


A SIMPLETON. 


not seem angry. Christopher’s heart 
gave a leap inside him, and he began to 
glow with the wildest hopes. For what 
could this mean but relenting ? 

Mr. Lusignan took him first into the 
study, and lighted two candles himself. 
He did not want the servants prying. 

The lights showed Christopher a change 
in Mr. Lusignan. He looked ten years 
older. 

“You are not well, sir,’’ said Christo- 
pher, gently. 

“‘My health is well enough, but I ama 
broken-hearted man. Dr. Staines, forget 
all that passed here at your last visit. 
All that is over. Thank you for loving 
my poor girl as you do. Give me your 
hand. God bless you! Sir, I am sorry 
to say it is as a physician I invite you 
now. She is ill, sir—very, very ill! ”’ 

“‘ 111, and not tell me? ”’ 

«She kept it from you, my poor friend, 
not to distress you; and she tried to keep 
it from me, but how could she? For two 
months she has had some terrible com- 
plaint: it is destroying her. She is the 
ghost of herself. Oh, my poor child! my 
child ! ”’ 

The old man sobbed aloud. The young 
man stood trembling andashy pale. Still, 
the habits of his profession and the expe- 
rience of dangers overcome, together with 
a certain sense of power, kept him up; 
but, above all, love and duty said, ‘“‘ Be 
firm.’’ He asked for an outline of the 
symptoms. 

They alarmed him greatly. 

‘Let us lose no more time,’’ said he: 
““T will see her at ‘once.”’ 

‘“ Do you object to my being present ?”’ 

““Of course not.”’ 

“Shall I tell you what Dr. Snell says 
it is, and Mr. Wyman? ”’ 

*‘ By all means, after I have seen her.”’ 

This comforted Mr. Lusignan. He was 
to get an independent judgment, at all 
events. 

When they reached the top of the 
stairs, Dr. Staines paused, and leaned 
against the baluster. ‘‘ Give me a mo- 
ment,’’ said he. ‘‘ The patient must not 
know how my heart is beating; and she 
must see nothing in my face but what I 


219 


choose her to see. Give me your hand 
once more, sir; let us both control our- 
selves. Now announce me.” 

Mr. Lusignan opened the door, and said, 
with forced cheerfulness, ‘‘ Dr. Staines, 
my dear! come to give you the benefit 
of his skill.’ 

She lay on the sofa, just as we left her, 
only her bosom began to heave. 

Then Christopher Staines drew himself 
up; and the majesty of knowledge and 
love together seemed to dilate his noble 
frame. He fixed his eye on that reclin- 


ing, panting figure, and stepped lightly, — 


but firmly across the room, to know the 
worst—like a lion walking up to leveled 
lances. 


CHAPTER IIr. 


THE young physician walked steadily 
up to his patient, without taking his eye 
off her, and drew a chair to her side. 

Then she took down one hand—the left 
—and gave it to him, averting her face 
tenderly, and still covering it with the 
right, ‘‘ For,’’ said she to herself, ““I am 
such a fright now.’? This opportune re- 
flection, and her heaving bosom, proved 
that she at least felt herself something 
more than his patient. Her pretty con- 
sciousness made his task more difficult : 
nevertheless, he only allowed himself to 
press her hand tenderly with both his 
palms one moment, and then he entered 
on his functions bravely. ‘‘Iam here as 
your physician.”’ 

““Very well,”’ said she softly. 

He gently detained the hand, and put 
his finger lightly to her pulse; it was 
palpitating, and a fallacious test. Oh, 
how that beating pulse, by love’s electric 
current, set his own heart throbbing in a 
moment ! 

He put her hand gently, reluctantly 
down, and said, ‘‘Oblige me by turning 
this way.’’ She turned: and he winced 


internally at the change in her; but his 


220 WORKS OF 
face betrayed nothing. He looked at her 
full; and, after a pause, put her some 
questions; one was as to the color of the 
hemorrhage. She said it was bright red. 

‘‘Not a tinge of purple ? ”’ | 

‘*No,’’ said she hopefully, mistaking 
him. 

He suppressed a sigh. 

Then he listened at her shoulder-blade 
and at her chest, and made her draw her 
breath while he was listening. The acts 
were simple and usual in medicine; but 
there was a deep, patient, silent intensity 
about his way of doing them. 

Mr. Lusignan crept nearer, and stood 
with both hands on a table, and his old 
head bowed, awaiting, yet dreading the 
verdict. 

Up to this time Dr. Staines, instead of 
tapping and squeezing and pulling the 
patient about, had never touched her 
with his hand, and only grazed her with 
his ear: but now he said, ‘“‘ Allow me,”’’ 
and put both hands to her waist, more 
lightly and reverently than I can de- 
scribe: ‘“‘now draw a deep breath, if you 
please.’’ 

“There !”’ 

“Tf you could draw a deeper still,”’ 
said he insinuatingly. 

‘‘There, then,’’ said she a little pet- 
tishly. 

Dr. Staines’s eye kindled. 

‘*¢Hum!’’ said he. Then, after a con- 
siderable pause, ‘‘Are you better or 
worse after each hemorrhage ? ”’ 

‘La!’ said Rosa; ‘“‘ they never asked 
me that. Why, better.’’ 

‘‘ No faintness ? ”’ 

‘<Not a bit.”’ 

‘‘ Rather a sense of relief, perhaps ? ”’ 

“Yes. I feel lighter and better.”’ 

The examination was concluded. 

Dr. Staines looked at Rosa, and then at 
her father. The agony in that aged face, 
and the love that agony implied, won 
him; and it was to the parent he turned 
to give his verdict. 

‘*The hemorrhage is from the lungs—”’ 

Lusignan interrupted him: ‘“ From the 
lungs? ’’ cried he in dismay. 

“Yes: a slight congestion of the 
lungs.”’ 


CHARLES READE. 


‘*But not incurable! Oh! not incur- 
able, doctor ! ’’ . 

‘‘Heaven forbid! It is curable—easily 
—by removing the cause.”’ 

‘And what is the cause? ’’ 

«The cause?’? He — hesitated, and 
looked rather uneasy. ‘‘ Well, the cause, 
sir, is—tight stays.”’ 

The tranquillity of the meeting was in- 
stantly disturbed. “ Tightstays! Me!” 
cried Rosa. ‘‘ Why I am the loosest girl 
in England! Look, papa!’ and, with- 
out any apparent effort, she drew herself 
in, and poked her little fist between her 
sash and her gown. ‘‘ There! ”’ 

Dr. Staines smiled sadly and a little 
sarcastically: he was evidently shy of 
encountering the lady in this argument ; 
but he was more at his ease with her 
father; so he turned toward him, and 
lectured him freely. 

‘*That is wonderful, sir; and the first 
four or five female patients that favored 
me with it made me disbelieve my other 
senses; but Miss Lusignan is now about 
the thirtieth who has shown me that 
marvelous feat, with a calm countenance 
that belies the Herculean effort. Nature 
has her every-day miracles: a boa-con- 
strictor, diameter seventeen inches, can 
swallow a buffalo; a woman, with her 
stays bisecting her almost, and lacerat- 
ing her skin, can yet for one moment 
make herself seem slack, to deceive a 
juvenile physician. The snake is the 
miracle of expansion; the woman is the 


| prodigy of contraction.”’ 


‘* Highly grateful for the comparison,”’ 
said Rosa. ‘* Women and snakes! ”’ 

Dr. Staines blushed, and looked uncom- 
fortable. ‘‘I did not mean to be offen- 
sive: it certainly was a very clumsy 
comparison.”’ 

‘“What does that matter?’ said Mr. 
Lusignan impatiently. ‘‘ Be quiet, Rosa, 
and let Dr. Staines and me talk sense.”’ 

‘Oh! then I am nobody in the busi- 
ness!’’ said this wise young lady. 

‘‘“You are everybody,’’ said Staines 
soothingly. ‘‘ But,’’? suggested he ob- 
sequiously, ‘“‘if you don’t mind, I would 
rather explain my views to your father 
—on this one subject.”’ 


A SIMPLETON. 


‘* And a pretty subject it is.”’ 

Dr. Staines then invited Mr. Lusignan 
to his lodgings, and promised to explain 
the matter anatomically. ‘‘ Meantime,”’ 
said he, “would you be good enough to 
put your hands to my waist, as I did to 
the patient’s.”’ 

Mr. Lusignan complied ; and the patient 
began to titter directly, to put them out 
of countenance. 

** Please observe what takes place when 
I draw a full breath.’’ 

“Now apply the same test to the 
patient. Breathe your best, please, 
Miss Lusignan.’’ 

The patient put on a face full of saucy 
mutiny. 

‘To oblige us both.”’ 

‘“*Oh, how tiresome! ”’ 

‘TT am aware it is rather laborious,’’ 
said Staines a little dryly; ‘‘ but to 
oblige your father! ”’ 

‘‘Oh, anything to oblige papa!’’ said 
she spitefully. ‘‘ There! And I do hope 
it will be the last. La! no; I don’t hope 
that, neither.”’ 

Dr. Staines politely ignored her little 
attempts to interrupt the argument. 
‘You found, sir, that the muscles of 
my waist, and my lower ribs themselves, 
rose and fell with each inhalation and ex- 
halation of air by the lungs.”’ 

“TT did; but my daughter’s waist was 
like dead wood, and so were her lower 
ribs.”’ 

At this volunteer statement, Rosa 
colored to her temples. . ‘‘ Thanks, papa! 
Pack me off to London, and sell me for a 
big doll !’’ 

‘‘In other words,’’ said the lecturer, 
mild and pertinacious, ‘‘ with us the 
jungs have room to blow, and the whole 
bony frame expands elastic with them, 
like the wood-work of a blacksmith’s bel- 
lows; but with this patient, and many of 
her sex, that noble and divinely-framed 
bellows is crippled and confined by a 
powerful machine of human construction ; 
so it works lamely and feebly: conse- 
quently too little air, and of course too 
little oxygen, passes through that spongy 
organ whose very life is air. Now mark 
the special result in this case: being 


221 


otherwise healthy and vigorous, our 
patient’s system sends into the lungs 
more blood than that one crippled organ 
can deal with. A smail quantity becomes 
extravasated at odd times. It accumu- 
lates, and would become dangerous ; 
then Nature, strengthened by sleep and 
by some hours’ relief from the diabolical 
engine, makes an effort, and flings it 
off; that is why the hemorrhage comes 
in the morning, and why she is the better 
for it, feeling neither faint nor sick, but 
relieved of a weight. This, sir, is the 
rationale of the complaint; and it is to 
you | must look for the cure. To judge 
from my other female patients, and from 
the few words Miss Lusignan has let 
fall, I fear we must not count on any 
very hearty co-operation from her; but 
you are her father, and have great 
authority. I conjure you to use it to the 
full, as you once used it, to my sorrow, 
in this very room. I am forgetting my 
character. I was asked here only as her 
physician, Good-evening.’’ 

He gave a httle gulp, and hurried 
away, with an abruptness that touched 
the father, and offended the sapient 
daughter. 

However, Mr. Lusignan followed him, 
and stopped him before he left the house, 
and thanked him warmly, and, to his sur- 
prise, begged him to call again in a day 
or two. 


‘‘Well, Rosa, what do you say ?”’ 

“Tsay that 1 am very unfortunate in 
my doctors. Mr. Wyman is a chatter- 
box, and knows nothing. Dr. Snell is 
Mr. Wyman’s echo. Christopher is a 
genius, and they are always full of- 
crotchets. A pretty doctor! Gone 
away and not prescribed for me!”’ 

Mr. Lusignan admitted it was odd. 
‘* But, after all,’’ said he, ‘‘if medicine 
does you no good? ” 

«“Ah! but any medicine he had pre- 
scribed would have done me good; and 
that makes it all the unkinder.’’ 

‘‘If you think so highly of his skill, 
why not take his advice? it can do no 
harm.”’ 


‘No harm? Why, if I was to leave 


4 


222 WORKS 
them off, I should catch a dreadful cold ; 
and that would be sure to settle on my 
chest, and carry me off in my present 
delicate state. Besides, it is so unfemi- 
nine not to wear them.’’ 

This staggered Mr. Lusignan, and he 
was afraid to press the point ; but what 
Staines had said fermented in his mind. 

Dr. Snell and Mr. Wyman continued 
their visits and their prescriptions. 

The patient got a little worse. 

Mr. Lusignan hoped Christopher would 
call again; but he did not. 

When Dr. Staines had satisfied himself 
that the disorder was easily curable, then 
wounded pride found an entrance even 
into his loving heart. That two stran- 
gers should have been consulted before 
him! He was only sent for because they 
could not cure her. 

As he seemed in no hurry to repeat his 
visit, Mr. Lusignan called on him, and 
said, politely, he had hoped to receive 
another call ere this. ‘‘ Personally,’’ said 
he, ‘I was much struck with, your ob- 
servations: but my daughter is afraid 
she will catch cold if she leaves off her 
corset; and that, you know, might be 
very serious.’’ 

Dr. Staines groaned. And when he 
had groaned, he lectured. ‘‘ Female pa- 
tients are wonderfully monotonous in this 
matter: they have a programme of eva- 
sions; and whether the patient is a lady 
or a house-maid, she seldom varies from 
that programme. You find her breath- 
ing life’s air with half a bellows, and you 
tell her so. ‘Oh, no!’ says she, and does 
the gigantic feat of contraction we wit- 
nessed that evening at your house. But, 
on inquiry, you learn there is a raw red 
line plowed in her flesh by the cruel 
stays. ‘What is that?’ you ask, and 
flatter yourself you have pinned her. 
Not a bit. ‘That was the last pair. I 
changed them because they hurt me.’ 
Driven out of that by proofs of recent 
laceration, they say, ‘If I leave them off, 
I should catch my death of cold ;’ which 
is equivalent to saying there is no flannel 
in the shops, no common-sense nor needles 
at home.”’ 


He then laid before him some large | 


OF CHARLES READE. 


French plates, showing the organs of 
the human trunk, and bade him observe 
in how small a space and with what skill 
the Creator has packed so many large 
yet delicate organs, so that they shall be 
free and secure from friction, though SO 
close to each other. He showed him the 
liver, an organ weighing four pounds and 
of a large circumference; the lungs, a 
very large organ suspended in the chest, 
and impatient of pressure; the heart, the 
stomach, the spleen, all of them too 
closely and artfully packed to bear any 
further compression. 

Having thus taken him by the eye, he 
took him by the mind. 

“Ts it a small thing for the creature to 
say to her Creator, ‘I can pack all this 
ege-china better than you can,’ and 
thereupon to jam all those vital organs 
close by a powerful, a very powerful and 
ingenious machine? Is it a small thing 
for that sex, which, for good reasons, the 
Omniscient has made larger in the waist 
than the male, to say to her Creator, 
‘You don’t: know your business ; women 
ought to be smaller in the waist than 
men, and shall be throughout the civil- 
ized world ?’ ”’ 

In short, he delivered so many true and 
pointed things on this trite subject that 
the old gentleman was convinced, and 
begged him to come over that very 
evening and convince Rosa. 

Dr. Staines shook his head dolefully ; 
and all his fire died out of him at hav-— 
ing to face the fair. ‘‘ Reason will be 
wasted. Authority is the only weapon. 
My profession and my reading have both 
taught me that the whole character of 
her sex undergoes a change the moment 
a man interferes with their dress. ._From 
Chaucer’s day to our own, neither public 
satire nor private remonstrance has ever 
shaken any of. their monstrous fashions. 
Easy, obliging, pliable, and weaker of 
will than men in other things, do but 
touch their dress, however objectionable, 
and rock is not harder, iron is not more 
stubborn, than these soft and yielding 
creatures. Itis no earthly use my com- 
ing. Ill come.’’ 

He came that very evening, and saw 


A SIMPLETON. 


directly she was worse. ‘ Of course,”’ 
said he sadly, “ you have not taken my 
advice.’’ 

Rosa replied with a toss and an eva- 
sion, ‘‘I was not worth a prescription ? ”’ 

‘** A physician can prescribe without 
sending his patient to the druggist; and, 
when he does, then it is his words are 
gold.”’ 

Rosa shook her head with an air of 
lofty incredulity. 

He looked ruefully at Mr. Lusignan, 
and jwas silent. Rosa smiled  sarcasti- 
cally: she thought he was at his wit’s 
end. 

Not quite: he was cudgeling his brains 
in search of some horribly unscientific 
argument that might prevail ; for he felt 
science would fall dead upon so fair an an- 
tagonist. Atlast his eye kindled: he had 
hit on an argument unscientific enough 
for anybody, he thought. Said he, in- 
eratiatingly, ‘‘You believe the Old 
Testament ? ”’ 

“*Of course Ido. Every syllable.’’ 

** And the lessons it teaches ? ”’ 

“ Certainly.’’ 

‘<“Then let me tell you a story from 
that book. A Syrian general had a 
terrible disease. He consulted Elijah 
by deputy. Elijah said, ‘Bathe seven 
times in a certain river, Jordan, and you 
will get well.’ The general did not like 
this at all: he wanted a prescription ; 
wanted to go to the druggist; didn’t 
believe in hydropathy to begin, and, in 
any case, turned up his nose at Jordan. 
What, bathe in an Israelitish brook, when 
his own country boasted noble rivers, with 
a reputation for sanctity into the bar- 
gain? In short, he preferred his leprosy 
to such irregular medicine. But it hap- 
pened, by some immense: fortuity, that 
one of his servants, though an Oriental, 
was a friend instead of a flatterer; and 
this sensible fellow said, ‘If the prophet 
told you to do some great and difficult 
thing to get rid of this fearful malady, 
would not you do it, however distasteful ? 
and can you hesitate when he merely 
says, ‘‘ Wash in Jordan, and be healed? ’’’ 
The general listened to good sense, and 
cured himself. Your case is parallel. 


223 


You would take quantities of foul medi- 
cine, you would submit to some painful 
operation, if life and health depended on 
it; then why not do a small thing fora 
great result? You have only to take off 
an unnatural machine, which cripples 
your growing frame, and was unknown 
to every one of the women whose forms 
in Parian marble the world admires. Off 
with that monstrosity, and your cure is 
as certain as the Syrian general’s, though 
science, and not inspiration, dictates the 
easy remedy.”’ 

Rosa had listened impatiently, and now 
replied with some warmth, ‘‘ This is shock- 
ingly profane. The idea of comparing 
yourself to Klijah, and me to a horrid 
leper! Much obliged. Not that I know 
what a leper is.”’ 

‘“*¢Come, come, that is not fair,’’ said 
Mr. Lusignan. ‘‘ He only compared the 
situation, not the people.”’ 

“ But, papa, the Bible is not to be 
dragged into the common affairs of 
life.’’ 

‘Then what on earth is the use of it ? ”’ 

“Oh, papa! Well, it is not Sunday; 
but I have had a sermon. This is the 
clergyman, and you are the commen- 
tator. He! he! And so now let us go 
back from divinity to medicine. I re- 
peat (this was the first time she had said . 
it), *‘ that my other doctors give me real 
prescriptions, written in hieroglyphics. 
You can’t look at them without feeling 
there must be something in them.”’ 

An angry spot rose on Christopher’s 
cheek ; but he only said, ‘“‘ And are your 
other doctors satisfied with the progress 
your disorder is making under their 
superintendence ? ”’ 

‘* Perfectly. Papa, tell him what they 
say, and I’ll find him their prescriptions.”’ 
She went to a drawer and rummaged, 
affecting not to listen. 

Lusignan complied. ‘“ First of all, sir, 
I must tell you they are confident it is 
not the lungs, but the liver.’’ 

“The what ?’’ shouted Christopher. 

“ Ah?’’ screamed Rosa. ‘* Oh, don’t! 
—bawling !’’ 

‘‘©And don’t you screech,’’ said her 


b) 


father, with a look of misery and appre- 


R24 


hension impartially distributed on the re- 
sounding pair. 

“You must have misunderstood them,”’ 
murmured Staines, in a voice that was 
now barely audible a yard off. ‘‘The 
hemorrhage of a bright red color, and 
expelled without effort or nausea? ”’ 

“* From the liver, they have assured me 
again and again,’’ said Lusignan. 

Christopher’s face still wore a look of 
blank amazement, till Rosa herself con- 
firmed it positively. 

Then he cast a look of agony upon her, 
and started up in a passion, forgetting, 
once more, that his host abhorred the 
sonorous. ‘‘Oh, shame! shame!’’ he 
cried, ‘“‘ that the noble profession of medi- 
cine should be disgraced by ignorance 
such as this!’’ Then he said sternly: 
“Sir, do not mistake my motives; but I 
decline to have anything further to do 
with this case until those two gentlemen 
have been relieved of it; and as this is 
very harsh, and on my part unprecedent- 
ed, I will give you one reason out of many 
I could give you. Sir, there is no road 
from the liver to the throat by which 
blood can travel in this way, defying the 
laws of gravity; and they knew from the 
patient that no strong expellant force 
has ever been in operation. Their diag- 
nosis, therefore, implies agnosis, or ig- 
norance too great to be forgiven. I will 
not share my patient with two gentlemen 
who know so little of medicine, and know 
nothing of anatomy, which is the A B C 
of medicine. Can I see their prescrip- 
tions ?”’ 

These were handed to him. ‘‘ Good 
heavens! ’’ said he, ‘‘ have you taken all 
these ? ” 

‘Most of them.’’ 

“Why, then, you have drunk about 
two gallons of unwholesome liquids, and 
eaten a pound or two of unwholesome 
solids. ‘These medicines have co-operated 
with the malady. The disorder lies not 
in the hemorrhage, but in the precedent 
extravasation; that is, a drain on the 
system. And how is the loss to be sup- 
plied? Why, by taking a little more 
nourishment than before. There is no 
other way; and probably Nature, left to 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


herself, might have increased your appe- 
tite to meet the occasion. But those two 
worthies have struck that weapon out of 
Nature’s hand; they have peppered away 
at the poor ill-used stomach with drugs 
and draughts, not very deleterious, I 
grant you, but all more or less indi- 
gestible, and all tending not to whet the 
appetite, but to clog the stomach, or turn 
the stomach, or pester the stomach, and 
so impair the appetite, and so co-operate, 
indirectly, with the malady.”’ 

“This is good sense,”’ said Lusignan. 
‘*T declare I—I wish I knew how to get 
rid of them.”’ 

“Ob, Lal dothabt, papacde 

““No, no: it is not worth a rumpus.”’ 

“T’ll do it too politely for that. Chris- 
topher, you are very clever, terribly 
clever. Whenever I threw their medi- 
cines away, I was always a little better 
that day. I will sacrifice them to you. 
It 7s a sacrifice. They are both so kind 
and chatty, and don’t grudge me heiro- 
glyphics : now you do.”’ 

She sat down and wrote two sweet 
letters to Dr. Snell and Mr. Wyman, 
thanking them for the great attention 
they had paid her; but finding herself 
getting steadily worse, in spite of all 
they had done for her, she proposed to 
discontinue her medicines for a time, 
and try change of air. 

‘¢ And suppose they call to see whether 
you are changing the air ?”’ 

‘‘In that case, papa, ‘Not at home.’ ”’ 

The notes were addressed and dis- 
patched. 

Then Dr. Staines brightened up, and 
said to Lusignan, ‘‘I am now happy to 
tell you that Ihave overrated the malady. 
The sad change I see in Miss Lusignan 
is partly due to the great bulk of un- 
wholesome esculents she has been eating 
and drinking under the head of medicines. 
These discontinued, she might linger on 
for years, existing, though not living: 
the tight-laced cannot be said to live. 
But, if she would be healthy and happy, 
let her throw that diabolical machine into 
the fire. It is no use asking her to loosen 
it; she can’t. Once there, the tempta- 
tion is too strong. Off withit; and, take 


Sr 
a) ted 


{ Wis eA 
hs OY inves 
oni 


BY} iff I f 


af 


Wy 


SHE WAS SPRINGING ALONG THE ROAD WITH ALL THE ELASTICITY OF YOUTH. 
—A Sinipleton, Chapter II. 


READE, Volume Eight. 


A SIMPLETON. 


my word, you will be one of the healthi- 
est and most vigorous young ladies in 
Europe.”’ 

Rosa looked rueful, and almost sul- 
len. 

She said she had parted with her doc- 
tors for him, but she really could not go 
about without stays. ‘‘ They are as loose 
as they can be. See!”’ 

“That part of the programme is dis- 
posed of,’’ said Christopher. ‘‘ Please 
go on to No. 2. How about the raw 
red line where the loose machine has 
sawed your skin ?”’ 

‘What, reds line?) a Oh ls ob!) oh)! 
Somebody or other has been peeping 
in at my window. I'll have the ivy cut 
down to-morrow.’’ 

‘¢Simpleton!’’? said Mr. Lusignan, an- 
grily. ‘‘ You have let the cat out of the 
bag. There is such a mark, then; and 
this extraordinary young man has dis- 
cerned it with the eye of science.”’ 

‘He never discerned it at all,’’ said 
Rosa, red as fire; ‘‘and, what is more, 
he never will.”’ 

“‘T don’t want to. I should be very 
sorry to. I hope it will be gone in a 
week.”’ 

‘“‘T wish you were gone now, exposing 
me in this cruel way,’’ said Rosa, angry 
with herself for having said an idiotic 
thing, and furious with him for having 
made her say it. 

“‘Oh, Rosa!’ said Christopher, in a 
voice of tenderest reproach. 

But Mr. Lusignan interfered prompt- 
ly. ‘Rosa, no noise. I will not have you 
Snapping at your best friend and mine. 
If you are excited, you had better retire 
to your own room and compose yourself. 
I hate a clamor.’’ 

Rosa made a wry face at this rebuke, 
and then began to cry quietly. 

Every tear was like a drop of blood 
from Christopher’s heart. ‘‘ Pray don’t 
scold her, sir,’? said he, ready to snivel 
himself. ‘‘She meant nothing unkind ; 
it is only her pretty, sprightly way; and 
she did not really imagine a love so rev- 
erent as mine—’”’ 

‘‘Don’t you interfere between my fa- 
ther and me,”’ said this reasonable young 


225 


lady, now in an ungovernable state of 
feminine irritability. 

‘* No, Rosa,’’ said Christopher humbly. 
‘“‘Mr. Lusignan,’’ said he, ‘I hope you 
will tell her that from the very first 1 was 
unwilling to enter on this subject with her. 
Neither she nor I can forget my double 
character. I have not said half as much 
to her as I ought, being her physician ; 
and yet you see I have said more than 
she can bear from me, who, she knows, 
loves her and reveres her. Then, once 
for all, do pray let me put this delicate 
matter into your hands: it is a case for 
parental authority.’’ 

‘‘Unfatherly tyranny, that means,’’ 
said Rosa. ‘‘ What business have gen- 
tlemen interfering in such things? It is 
unheard of. I will not submit to it, even 
from papa.”’ 

‘«‘ Well, you need not scream at me,”’ 
said Mr. Lusignan ; and he shrugged his 
shoulders to Staines. ‘‘She is imprac- 
ticable, you see. If Ido my duty there 
will be a disturbance.’’ 

Now this roused the bile of Dr. Staines. 
‘What, sir,”’ said he, “‘ you could sepa- 
rate her and me by your authority, here 
in this very room ; and yet, when her life 
is at stake, you abdicate. You could part 
her from a man who loved her with every 
drop of his heart, and she said she loved 
him, or at all events preferred him to 
others, and you cannot part her from a 
miserable corset, although you see in her 
poor wasted face that it is carrying her 
to the churchyard. In that case, sir, 
there is but one thing for you to do: with- 
draw your opposition, and let me marry 
her. As her lover, I am powerless ; but 
invest me with a husband’s authority, 
and good-by corset! You will soon see 
the roses return to her cheek, and her 
elastic figure expanding, and her eye 
beaming with health and physical hap- 
piness.”’ 

Mr. Lusignan made an answer neither 
of his hearers expected. He said, “I 
have a great mind to take you at your 
word. Iam too old and fond of quiet to 
drive a simpleton in single harness.”’ 

This contemptuous speech, and above | 


all the word ‘‘simpleton,’’ which had 
a 8 READE—VOL. VIII. 


226 WORKS 
been applied to her pretty freely by young 
ladies at school, and always galled her 
terribly, inflicted so intolerable a wound on 
Rosa’s vanity that she was ready to burst: 
on that, of course, her stays contributed 
their might of physical uneasiness. Thus 
irritated, mind and body, she burned to 
strike in return; and, as she could not 
slap her father in the presence of another, 
she gave it to Christopher backhanded. 

«You can turn me out of doors,’ said 
she, ‘‘if you are tired of your daughter ; 
but 1 am not such a s¢mpleton as to 
marry a tyrant. No; he has shown the 
cloven foot in time. A husband’s au- 
thority, indeed !’? Then she turned her 
hand, and gave it himdirect. ‘‘ You told 
me a different story when you were pay- 
ing your court to me; then you were to 
be my servant—all hypocritical sweet- 
ness. You had better go and marry a 
Circassian slave. They don’t wear stays, 
and they do wear trousers; so she will 
be unfeminine enough even for you. No 
English lady would let her husband dic- 
tate to her about such a thing. I can 
have as many husbands as | like, without 
falling into the clutches of a tyrant. You 
are a rude, indelicate— And so please 
understand it is all over between you 
and me.” 

Both her auditors stood aghast; for 
she uttered this conclusion with a dignity 
of which the opening gave no promise, 
and the occasion, weighed in masculine 
balances, was not worthy. 

“You do not mean that. You cannot 
mean it,’’ said Dr. Staines aghast. 

‘1 do mean it,’’ said she firmly ; ‘‘and, 
if you are a gentleman, you will not com- 
pel me to say it twice—three times, I 
mean.’’ 

At this dagger-stroke, Christopher 
turned very pale; but he maintained 
his dignity. ‘‘I am a gentleman,”’ said 
he quietly, ‘‘and a very unfortunate one. 
Good-by, sir; thank you kindly. Good- 
by, Rosa; God bless you! Oh, pray take 
a thought! Remember, your life and 
death are in your own hand now. I am 
powerless.”’ 

And he left the house in sorrow, and 
just, but not pettish, indignation. 


all for what? 


OF CHARLES READE. 


When he was gone, father and Jaugh- 
ter looked at each other; and there was 
the silence that succeeds a storm. 

Rosa, feeling the most uneasy, was the 
first to express her satisfaction. ‘‘ There, 
heis gone; andlam glad of it. Now you 
and I shall never quarrel again. I was 
quite right. Such impertinence! Such 
indelicacy! A fine prospect for me if 1 
had married such a man! However, he 
is gone; and so there’s an end of it. The 
idea! telling a young lady, before her 
father, she is tight-laced. If you had 
not been there, I could have forgiven 
him. ButlIamnot; itisastory. Now,”’ 
suddenly exalting her voice, ‘‘ I know you 
believe him ! ”’ 

“Tsay nothing,’’ whispered papa, hop- 
ing to still her by example. This ruse 
did not succeed. 

“But you look volumes,” cried she; 
‘‘and I can’t bear it; I won’t bear it. If 
you don’t believe me, ask my mazd.”’ 
And, with this felicitous speech, she rang 
the bell. 

‘¢You’ll break the wire, if you don’t 
mind,’’? suggested her father piteously. 

“All the better! Why should not 
wires be broken as well as my heart? 
Oh, here she is! Now, Harriet, come 
here.”’ 

iv CS mM iss.: 

“And tell the truth. Am I tight- 
laced ? ’’ 

Harriet looked in her face a moment, 
to see what was required of her, and 
then said, ‘‘That you are not, miss. I 
never dressed a young lady as wore’em 
easier than you do.” 

“¢There, papa. That will do, Harriet.”’ 

Harriet retired as far as the keyhole; 
she saw something was up. 

‘‘Now,’’ said Rosa, ‘‘you see I was 
right; and, after all, it was a match 
you did not approve. Well, it is all 
over; and now you may write to your 
favorite, Colonel Bright. If he comes 
here, Ill box his old ears. I hate him. 
Thate them all. Forgive your wayward 
girl. Vl stay with you all my days. I 
dare say that will not be long, now I have 
quarreled with my guardian angel; and 
Papa! papa! how can you 


99 


A SIMPLETON. 


sit there and not speak me one word of 
comfort? ‘Simpleton!’ Ah! that I 
am, to throw away a love a queen is 
scarcely worthy of; and all for what? 
Really, if it wasn’t for the ingratitude 
and wickedness of the thing, it is too 
laughable. Ha! ha!—oh! oh! oh!—ha! 
ha! ha !’’ 

And off she went into hysterics, and 
began to gulp and choke frightfully. 

Her father cried for help in dismay. 
In ran Harriet, saw, and screamed, but 
did not lose her head. This veracious 
person whipped a pair of scissors off the 
table and cut the young lady’s stay laces 
directly. Then there was a burst of im- 
prisoned beauty ; a deep, deep sigh of re- 
lief came from a bosom that would have 
done honor to Diana ; and the scene soon 
concluded with fits of harmless weeping, 
renewed at intervals. 

When it had settled down to this, her 
father, to soothe her, said he would write 
to Dr. Staines and bring about a recon- 
ciliation if she liked. 

*“No,”? said she, ‘‘you shall kill me 
sooner. I should die of shame.’’ 

She added, ‘‘ Oh, pray, from this hour 
never mention his name to me!”’ 

And then she had another cry. 

Mr. Lusignan was a sensible man: he 
dropped the subject for the present ; but 
he made up his mind to one thing—that 
he would never part with Dr. Staines as 
a physician. 

Next day Rosa kept her own room un- 
til dinier-time, and was as unhappy as 
she deserved to be. She spent her time 
in sewing on stiff flannel linings, and cry- 
ing. She half-hoped Christopher would 
write to her, so she might write back 
that she forgave him. But not a line. 

At half-past six, her volatile mind took 
a turn, real or affected. She would cry 
no more for an ungrateful fellow—un- 
grateful for not seeing through the stone 
walls how she had been employed all the 
morning, and making it up; so she 
bathed her red eyes, made a great al- 
teration in her dress, and came dancing 
into the room, humming an Italian ditty. 

As they were sitting together in the 
dining-room after dinner, two letters 


227 


came by the post to Mr. Lusignan— 
from Mr. Wyman and Dr. Snell. 
Mr. Wyman’s letter. 


‘‘ DEAR SiR—I am sorry to hear from 
Miss Lusignan that she intends to discon- 
tinue medical advice. The disorder was 
progressing favorably, and nothing to be 
feared, under proper treatment. 

‘¢ Yours, etc.” 


Dr. Snell’s letter. 


‘“*DEAR Sir—Miss Lusignan has writ- 
ten to me somewhat impatiently, and 
seems disposed to dispense with my 
visits. I do not, however, think it 
right to withdraw without telling you 
candidly that this is an unwise step. 
Your daughter’s health is in a very 
precarious condition. 

écoY OULSTLeGGl? 


Rosa burst out laughing. ‘I have 
nothing to fear; and I’m on the brink 
of the grave. That comes of writing 
without a consultation. If they had 
written at one table, I should have 
been neither well nor ill. Poor Chris- 
topher!’’ and her sweet face began to 
work piteously. 

‘‘There, there: drink a glass of wine.’’ 

She did, and a tear with it, that ran 
into the glass like lightning. 

Warned by this that grief sat very 
near the bright hilarious surface, Mr. 
Lusignan avoided all emotional subjects 
for the present. Next day, however, he 
told her she might dismiss her lover ; 
but no power should make him dismiss 
his pet physician, unless her health im- 
proved. 

“*T will not give you that excuse for in- 
flicting him on me again,’’ said the young 
hypocrite. 

She kept her word. She got better 
and better, stronger, brighter, gayer. 

She took to walking every day, and 
increasing the distance, till she could 
walk ten miles without fatigue. 

Her favorite walk was to a certain cliff 
that commanded a noble view of the sea: 
to get to it, she must pass through the 


228 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


town of Gravesend; and we may be | world having plucked him, he has a 


sure she did not pass so often through 
that city without some idea of meeting 
the lover she had used so ill, and elicit- 
ing an apology from him. Sly puss! 

When she had walked twenty times or 
thereabouts through the town and never 
seen him, she began to fear she had of- 
fended him past hope. ‘Then she used to 
cry at the end of every walk. 

But by-and-by bodily health, vanity, 
and temper combined to rouse the de- 
fiant spirit. Said she, ‘‘If he really 
loved me, he would not take me at my 
word in sucha hurry. And, besides, why 
does he not watch me, and find out what 
Iam doing and where I walk? ”’ 

At last she really began to persuade 
herself that she was an ill-used and 
slighted girl. She was very angry at 
times, and disconsolate at others—a 
mixed state, in which hasty and impul- 
sive young ladies commit life-long follies. 

Mr. Lusignan observed the _ surface 
only. Hesaw his invalid daughter get- 
ting better every day, till at last she be- 
came a picture of health and bodily vigor. 
Relieved of his fears, he troubled his 
head but little about Christopher Staines. 
Yet he esteemed him, and had got to 
like him; but Rosa was a beauty, and 
could do better than marry a struggling 
physician, however able. He launched 
out into a little gayety, resumed his 
quiet dinner parties, and, after some 
persuasion, took his now blooming 
daughter to a ball given by the officers 
at Chatham. 

She was the belle of the ball beyond 
dispute, and danced with ethereal grace 
and athletic endurance. She was madly 
fond of waltzing; and here she encoun- 
tered what she was pleased to call a 
divine dancer. It was a Mr. Reginald 
Falcon, a gentleman who had retired to 
the sea-side to recruit his health and 
finances, sore tried by London and Paris. 
Falcon had run through his fortune, but 
had acquired, in the process, certain 
talents, which, as they cost the acquirer 
dear, so they sometimes repay him, es- 
pecially if he is not overburdened with 
principle, and adopts the notion that, the 


right to pluck the world, He could play 
billiards well, but never so well as when 
backing himself for a heavy stake. He 
could shoot pigeons well; and his shoot- 
ing improved under that which makes 
some marksmen miss—a heavy bet 
against the gun. He danced to perfec- 
tion ; and being a well-bred, experienced, 
brazen, adroit fellow, who knew a little 
of everything that was going, he had 
always plenty to say: above all, he had 
made a particular study of the fair sex ; 
had met with many successes, many re- 
buffs, and at last, by keen study of their 
minds, and a habit he had acquired of 
watching their faces, and shifting his 
helm accordingly, had learned the great 
art of pleasing them. They admired his 
face: to me the short space between his 
eyes and his hair, his aquiline nose, and 
thin straight lips, suggested the bird of 
prey a little too much ; but to fair doves, 
born to be clutched, this similitude per- 
haps was not very alarming, even if 
they observed it. 

Rosa danced several times with him, 
and told him he danced like an angel. 
He informed her that was because, for 
once, he was dancing with an angel. She 
laughed and blushed. He flattered de- 
liciously, and it cost him little; for he 
fell in love with her that night deeper 
than he had ever been in his whole life of 
intrigue. He asked leave to call on her: 
She looked a little shy at that, and did 
not respond. He instantly withdrew his 
proposal, with an apology and a sigh 
that raised her pity. However, she was 
not a forward girl, even when excited by 
dancing and charmed with her partner ; 
so she left him to find his own way out 
of that difficulty. 

He was not long about it. At the end 
of the next waltz, he asked her if he 
might venture to solicit an introduction 
to her father. 

‘‘Oh, certainly !’’ said she. ‘* What a 
selfish girl lam! this is terribly dull for 
him? 

The introduction being made, and Rosa 
being engaged for the next three dances, 


‘Mr. Falcon sat by Mr. Lusignan and en- 


A SIMPLETON. 


tertained him. For this little piece of 
apparent self-denial he was paid in vari- 
ous coin: Lusignan found out he was the 
son of an old acquaintance, and so the 
door of Kent Villa opened to him. Mean- 
time, Rosa Lusignan never passed him, 
even in the arms of a cavalry officer, 
without bestowing a glance of approval 
and gratitude on him. ‘‘ What a good- 
hearted young man!’’ thought she. 
‘*How kind of him to amuse papa! and 
now I can stay so much longer.”’ 
Falcon followed up the dance by a call, 
and was infinitely agreeable ; followed up 
the call by another, and admired Rosa 
with so little disguise that Mr. Lusignan 
said to her, ‘‘I think you have made a 


conquest. His father had considerable 
estates in Essex. I presume he inherits 
them.”’ 


‘‘Oh, never mind his estates!’ said 


Rosa. ‘‘He dances like an angel, and 
gossips charmingly, and 7s so nice.’’ 

Christopher Staines pined for this girl 
in silence ; his fine frame got thinner, his 
pale cheek paler, as she got rosier and 
rosier; and how? Why, by following the 
very advice she had snubbed him for giv- 
ing her. At last he heard she had been 
the belle of a ball, and that she had 
been seen walking miles from home, and 
blooming as a Hebe. Then his deep anxi- 
ety ceased, his pride stung him furiously ; 
he began to think of his own value, and 
to struggle with all his might against his 
deep love. Sometimes he would even in- 
veigh against her, and call her a fickle, 
ungrateful girl, capable of no strong pas- 
sion but vanity. Many a hard term he 
applied to her in his sorrowful solitude, 
but not a word when he had a hearer. 
He found it hard to rest: he kept dash- 
jng up to London and back. He plunged 
furiously into study. He groaned and 
sighed, and fought the hard and bitter 
fight that is too often the lot of the 
deep that love the shallow. Strong, but 
single-hearted, no other lady could comfort 
him. He turned from their female com- 
pany, and shunned all for the fault of one. 

The inward contest wore him. He be- 
gan to look very thin and wan, and all 
for a Simpleton. 


229 


Mr. Falcon prolonged his stay in the 
neighborhood, and drove a handsome 
dog-cart over twice a week to visit Mr. 
Lusignan. 

He used to call on that gentleman at 
four o’clock ; for at that hour Mr. Lusig- 
nan was always out, and his daughter 
always at home. 

She was at home at that hour, because 
she took her long walks in the morning. 
While her new admirer was in bed, or 
dressing, or breakfasting, she was spring- 
ing along the road with all the elasticity 
of youth and health and native vigor, 
braced by daily exercise. 

Twenty-one of these walks did she take 
with no other result than health and ap- 
petite ; but the twenty-second was more 
fertile, extremely fertile. Starting later 
than usual, she passed through Graves- 
end while Reginald Falcon was smoking 
at his front window. He saw her, and 
instantly doffed his dressing-gown and 
donned his coat to follow her. He was 
madly in love with her; and being a man 
who had learned to shoot pigeons and op- 
portunities flying, he instantly resolved 
to join her in her walk, get her clear of 
the town, by the sea-beach, where beauty 
melts, and propose to her. Yes, mar- 
riage had not been hitherto his habit ; 
but this girl was peerless. He was 
pledged by honor and gratitude to 
Phoebe Dale; but hang all that now. 
‘No man should marry one woman 
when he loves another; it is dishonor- 
able.’? He got into the street, and fol- 
lowed her as fast as he could without 
running. 

It was not so easy to catch her. Ladies 
are not built for running ; but a fine, tall, 
symmetrical girl, who has practiced walk- 
ing fast, can cover the ground wonder- 
fully in walking—if she chooses. It was 
a sight to see how Rosa Lusignan squared 
her shoulders and stepped out from the 
loins, like a Canadian girl skating, while 
her elastic foot slapped the pavement as 
she spanked along. 

She had nearly cleared the town before 
Falcon came up with her. 

He was hardly ten yards from her 
when an unexpected incident occurred. 


230 WORKS 
She whisked round the corner of Bird 
Street, and ran plump against Christo- 
pher Staines; in fact, she darted into 
his arms, and her face almost touched 
the breast she had wounded so deeply. 


CHAPTER IV. 


Rosa cried, ‘‘Oh!’’ and put up her 
hands to her face in lovely confusion, 
coloring like a peony. 

“TI beg your pardon,’’ said Chris- 
topher stiffly, but in a voice that 
trembled. 

ciNo,? yisaid: (Rosa 3.\Sit) was ram 
against you. I walk so fast now. Hope 
I did not hurt you.”’ 

“Hurt me? ”’ 

‘‘ Well, then, frighten you ?”’ 

No answer. 

‘*Oh, please don’t quarrel with me in 
the street!’’ said Rosa, cunningly im- 
plying that he, was the quarrelsome one. 
“T am going on the beach. Good-by.’’ 
This adieu she uttered softly, and in a 
hesitating tone, that belied it. She 
started off, however, but much more 
slowly than she was going before; and, 
as she went, she turned her head with in- 
finite grace, and kept looking askant 
down at the pavement two yards behind 
her: moreover, she went close to the wall 
and left room at her side for another to 
walk. 

Christopher hesitated a moment; but 
the mute invitation, so arch yet timid, 
so pretty, tender, sly, and womanly, was 
too much for: him, as it has generally 
proved for males; and the philosopher’s 
foot was soon in the very place to which 
the simpleton with the mere tail of her 
eye directed it. 

They walked along side by side in 
silence, Staines agitated, gloomy, con- 
fused; Rosa radiant and glowing; yet 
not knowing what to say for herself, and 
wanting Christopher to begin. So they 
walked along without a word. 


OF CHARLES READE. 


Falcon followed them at some distance, 
to see whether it was an admirer or only 
an acquaintance; a lover, he never 
dreamed of, she had shown such evi- 
dent pleasure in his company, and had 
received his visits alone so constantly. 

However, when the pair had got to 
the beach, and were walking slower and 
slower, he felt a pang of rage and jealousy, 
turned on his heel with an audible curse, 
and found Phoebe Dale a few yards be- 
hind him with a white face and a peculiar 
look. He knew what the look meant. 
He had brought it to that faithful face 
before to-day. 


‘You are better, Miss Lusignan.’’ 

‘“‘ Better, Dr. Staines? Iam health it- 
self, thanks to— Hem!”’ 

‘Our estrangement has agreed with 
you?’’ This very bitterly. 

‘You know very well it is not that. 
Oh, please don’t make me cry in the 
streets ! ’’ 

This humble petition, or rather meek 
threat, led to another long silence. It 
was continued till they had nearly reached 
the shore. But meantime, Rosa’s furtive 
eyes scanned Christopher’s face ; and her 
conscience smote her at the signs of suffer- 
ing. She felt a desire to beg his pardon 
with deep humility; but she suppressed 
that weakness. She hung her head with 
a pretty, sheepish air, and asked him if 
he could not think of something agreeable 
to say to one after deserting one so long. 

‘“‘T am afraid not,’’ said Christopher 
bluntly. ‘‘I have an awkward habit of 
speaking the truth ; and some people can’t 
bear that, not even when it is spoken for 
their good.’’ 

‘‘That depends on temper and nerves 
and things,’’ said Rosa deprecatingly ; 
then softly, ‘“‘I could bear anything from 
you now.”’ 

‘‘Indeed !’’ said Christopher, grimly. 
“Well, then, 1 hear you had no sooner 
got rid of your old lover, for loving you 
too well, and telling you the truth, than 
you took up another—some flimsy man of 
fashion, who will tell you any le you 
like.’’ 


‘It isa story, a wicked story,’’ cried 


A SIMPLETON. 


‘Me, a lov- 
Il can’t 


Rosa, thoroughly alarmed. 
er? He dances like an angel. 
help that.”’ 

‘Are his visits at your house like 
angels’, few and far between?’ And 
the true lover’s brow lowered black upon 
her for the first time. 

Rosa changed color; and her eyes fell 
amoment. ‘‘ Ask papa,’’ said she. ‘ His 
father was an old friend of papa’s.”’ 

‘Rosa, you are prevaricating. Young 
men do not call on old gentlemen when 
there is an attractive young lady in the 
house.’’ 

The argument was getting too close, so 
Rosa operated a diversion. ‘‘So,’’ said 
she, with a sudden air of lofty disdain, 
swiftly and adroitly assumed, ‘‘ you have 
had me watched.’’ 

“NotI: I only hear what people say.”’ 

‘*Listen to gossip, and not have me 
watched! That shows how little you 
really cared for me. Well, if you had, 
you would have made a little discovery ; 
‘that is all.’’ 

‘Should 1? ’’ said Christopher, puzzled. 
‘What ? ’’ 

‘‘T shall not tell you. Think what you 
please. Yes, sir, you would have found 
out that I take long walks every day, all 
alone; and what is more, that I walk 
through Gravesend hoping, like a goose, 
that somebody really loved me, and would 
meet me, and beg my pardon; and, if he 
had, I should have told him it was only 
my tongue and my nerves and things. 
My heart was his, and my gratitude; 
and, after all, what do words signify when 
I am a good, obedient girl at bottom? 
So that is what you have lost by not con- 
descending to look after me. Fine love! 
Christopher, beg my pardon.”’ 

‘¢ May I ask for what? ”’ 

“Why, for not understanding me; for 
not knowing that I should be sorry the 
moment you were gone. I took them off 
the very next day, to please you.”’ 

‘Took off whom? Oh, I understand ! 
You did? Then you are a good girl.’’ 

‘‘Didn’t I tell you I was? A good 
obedient girl, and anything but a flirt.” 

‘*T don’t say that.’’ 


‘But I do. Don’t interrupt. It is to 


231 


your good advice lowe my health; and 
to love anybody but you, when I owe you 
my love and my life, 1 must be a heart- 
less, ungrateful, worthless— Oh, Chris- 
topher, forgive me! No, no; I mean, 
beg my pardon.”’ 

‘*T’ll do both,’’ said Christopher, tak- 
ing her in his arms. ‘Ll beg your par- 
don, and I forgive you.’’ 

Rosa leaned her head tenderly on his’ 
shoulder, and began tosigh. ‘‘ Oh, dear, 
dear, 1 am a wicked, foolish girl, not fit to 
walk alone! ”’ 

On this admission, Christopher spoke 
out, and urged her to put an end to all 
these unhappy misunderstandings, and to 
his new torment, jealousy, by marrying 
him. 

“And sol would this very minute, if 
papa would consent. But,’’ said she shy- 
ly, “you never can be so foolish to wish 
it. What! a wise man like you to marry 
a simpleton ! ”’ 

“Did I ever call you that ?’’ asked 
Christopher, reproachfully. 

‘* No, dear; but you are the only one 
who has not; and perhaps I should lose 
even the one, if you were to marry me. 
Oh, husbands are not so polite as lovers! 
I have observed that, simpleton or not.” 

Christopher assured her that he took 
quite a different view of her character: 
he believed her to be too profound for 
shallow people to read all in a moment; 
he even intimated that he himself had 
experienced no little difficulty in under- 
standing her at odd times. ‘* And so,” 
said he, ‘‘ they turn round upon you, and 
instead of saying, ‘ We are too shallow 
to fathom you,’ they pretend you are a 
simpleton.’’ 

This solution of the mystery had never 
occurred to Rosa, nor, indeed, was it 
likely to occur to any creature less ingen- 
ious than a lover. It pleased her hugely : 
her fine eyes sparkled; and she nestled 
closer still to the strong arm that was to 
parry every ill, from mortal disease to 
galling epithets. 

She listened with a willing ear to all 
his reasons, his hopes, his fears; and, 
when they reached her father’s door, it 
was settled that he should dine there that 


ROd2 


day, and urge his suit to her father after 
dinner. She would implore the old gen- 
tleman to listen to it favorably. 

The lovers parted ; and Christopher 
went home like one who has awakened 
from a hideous dream to daylight and 
happiness. 

He had not gone far before he met a 
dashing dog-cart driven by an exquisite. 
He turned to look after it, and saw it 
drive up to Kent Villa. 

In a moment he divined his rival; and 
a sickness of heart came over him. But 
he recovered himself directly, and said, 
‘‘ Tf that is the fellow, she will not receive 
him now.”’ 

She did receive him, though: at all 
events, the dog-cart stood at the door, 
and its master remained inside. 

Christopher stood and counted the min- 
utes: five—ten—fifteen—twenty minutes ; 
and still the dog-cart stood there. 

It was more than he could bear. He 
turned savagely, and strode back to 
Gravesend, resolving that all this torture 
should end that night, one way or other. 


Phoebe Dale was the daughter of a 
farmer in Essex, and one of the happiest 
young women in England till she knew 
Reginald Falcon, Esq. 

She was reared on wholesome food, in 
wholesome air, and used to churn butter, 
make bread, cook a bit now and then, 
cut out and sew all her own dresses, get 
up her own linen, make hay, ride any- 
thing on four legs, and, for all that, was 
a great reader, and taught in the Sunday 
school to oblige the vicar; wrote a neat 
hand, and was a good arithmetician ; 
kept all the house accounts and farm 
accounts. She was a musician, too—not 
profound, but very correct; she would 
take her turn at the harmonium in 
church, and when she was there you 
never heard a wrong note in the bass, 
nor an inappropriate flourish nor bad 
time. She could sing too, but never 
would, except her part in a psalm. Her 
voice was a deep contralto; and she 
chose to be ashamed of this heavenly 
organ because a pack of envious girls 
had giggled, and said it was like a man’s. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


In short, her natural ability, and the 
range and variety of her useful accom- 
plishments, were considerable; not that 
she was a prodigy, but she belonged to a 
small class of women in this island who 
are not too high to use their arms, nor 
too low to cultivate their minds; and, 
having a faculty and a habit deplorably 
rare among her sex, viz., attention, she 
had profited by her miscellaneous ad- 
vantages. 

Her figure and face both told her 
breed at once: here was an old English 
pastoral beauty; not the round-backed, 
narrow-chested cottager, but the well- 
fed, erect rustic, with broad, full bust 
and massive shoulder, and arm as hard 
as a rock with health and constant use ; 
a hand finely cut, though neither small 
nor very white, and just a little hard 
inside compared with Luxury’s soft 
palm; a face honest, fair, and rather 
large than small; not beautiful, but ex- 
ceedingly comely ; a complexion not pink 
and white, but that delicately blended, 
brick-dusty color which tints the whole 
cheek in fine gradation, outlasts other 
complexions twenty years, and beautifies 
the true Northern even in old age. 
Gray, limpid, honest, point-blank, search- 
ing eyes; hair true nut brown, without a 
shade of red or black, and a high smooth 
forehead, full of sense. Across it ran one 
deep wrinkle that did not belong to her 
youth; that wrinkle was the brand of 
trouble, the line of agony. It had come 
of loving above her, yet below her, and 
of loving an egotist. 

Three years before our tale commenced 
a gentleman’s horse ran away with him, 
and threw him on a heap of stones by the 
roadside, not very far from Farmer Dale’s 
gate. The farmer had him taken in: the 
doctor said he must not be moved. He 
was insensible; his cheek like delicate 
wax; his fair hair like silk stained with 
blood. He became Pheebe’s patient, and, 
in due course, her convalescent: his pale, 
handsome face and fascinating manners 
gained one charm more from weakness ; 
his vices were in abeyance. 

The womanly nurse’s heart yearned 


over her child, for he was feeble asa child ; 


A SIMPLETON. 


and when he got well enough to amuse 
his weary hours by making love to her, 
and telling her a pack of arrant lies, she 
was a ready dupe. He was to marry her 
as soon as ever his old uncle died and left 
him the means, etc., etc. Atlast he got 
well enough to leave her, and went away, 
her open admirer and secret lover. Le 
borrowed twenty pounds of her the day 
he left. 

He used to write her charming letters, 
and feed the flame: but one day her father 
sent her up to London, on his own busi- 
ness, all of a sudden; and she called on 
Mr. Falcon at his feigned address. She 
found he did not live there—only received 
letters. However, half a crown soon 
bought his real address, and thither 
Phoebe proceeded, with a troubled heart ; 
for she suspected that her true lover was 
in debt or trouble, and obliged to hide. 
Well, he must be got out of it, and hide 
at the farm meantime. 

So the loving girl knocked at the door, 
asked for Mr. Falcon, and was shown in 
to a lady rather showily dressed, who 
asked her business, and introduced her- 
self as Mrs. Falcon. 

Phoebe Dale stared at her, and then 
turned pale as ashes. She was para- 
lyzed, and could not find her tongue. 

‘Why, what is the matter now?” 
said the other sharply. 

‘« Are you married to Reginald Fal- 
On f.* 

“Of course I am. Look at my wed- 
ding-ring.”’ 

“Then I am not wanted here,’’ fal- 
tered Phoebe, ready to sink on the floor. 

“Certainly not, if you are one of the 
by-gones,’’ said the woman coarsely ; 
and Phoebe Dale waited to hear no more, 
but found her way, Heaven knows how ! 
into the street, and there leaned, half 
fainting, on a rail, till a policeman came 
and told her she had been drinking, and 
suggested a cool cell as the best cure. 

‘*Not drink; only a breaking heart,”’ 
said she, in her low mellow voice that 
few could resist. 

He got her a glass of water, drove 
away the boys that congregated direct- 
ly, and she left the street. But she soon 


233 


came back again, and waited about for 
Reginald Falcon. 

It was night when he appeared. She 
seized him by the breast and taxed him 
with his villainy. 

What with her iron grasp, pale face, 
and flashing eyes, he lost his cool impu- 
dence and blurted out excuses. It was 
an old and unfortunate connection; he 
would give the world to dissolve it, if he 
could do it like a gentleman. 

Phoebe told him to please himself; he 
must part with one or the other. 

‘* Don’t talk nonsense,’”’ said this man 
of brass. ‘‘Tll un-Falcon her on the 
spot.”’ 

‘Very well,’’ said Phebe. “Iam go- 
ing home, and if you are not there by to- 
morrow at noon’’— She said no more, 
but looked a great deal. Then she de- 
parted, and refused him her hand at 
parting. ‘*‘ We’ll see about that by and 
by,’’ said she. 

By noon my lord came down to the 
farm, and, unfortunately for Phoebe, 
played the penitent so skillfully for 
about a month that she forgave him, 
and loved him all the more for hav- 
ing so nearly parted with him. 

Her peace was not to endure long. He 
was detected in an intrigue in the very 


village. 
The insult struck so home that Phoebe 
herself, to her parents’ satisfaction, 


ordered him out of the house at once. 

But when he was gone she had fits of 
weeping, and could settle to nothing for 
a long time. 

Months had elapsed, and she was get- 
ting a sort of dull tranquillity, when one 
evening, taking a walk she had often 
taken with him, and mourning her soli- 
tude and wasted affection, he waylaid 
her, and clung to her knees, and shed 
crocodile tears on her hands, and after a 
long resistance, violent at first, but faint- 
er and fainter, got her in his power again, 
and that so completely that she met him 
several times by night, being ashamed to 
be seen with him in those parts by day. 

This ended in fresh promises of mar- 
riage, and in a constant correspondence 
by letter. This pest knew exactly how 


234 WORKS 
to talk to a woman, and how to write to 
one. His letters fed the unhappy flame : 
and, mind you, he sometimes deceived 
himself and thought he loved her; but it 
was only himself he loved. She was an 
invaluable lover, a faithful, disinterested 
friend: hers was a vile bargain; his an 
excellent one, and he clung to it. 

And so they went on. She detected 
him in another infidelity, and reproached 
him bitterly ; but she had no longer the 
strength to break with him. Neverthe- 
less, this time: she had the sense to make 
a struggle. She implored him on her 
very knees to show her a little mercy in 
return for all her love. ‘‘ For pity’s 


sake, leave me!’’ she cried. ‘‘ You are 
strong, and I am weak. You can end 
it forever; and pray do. You don’t 


want me; you don’t value me: then 
leave me once and for all, and end this 
hell you keep me in.’’ 

No; he could not or he would not leave 
her alone. Look at a bird’s wings !— 
how like an angel’s! Yet so vile 
a thing as a bit of bird-lime_ sub- 
dues them utterly: and such was the 
fascinating power of this mean man over 
this worthy woman. She was a reader, 
a thinker, a model of respectability, in- 
dustry, and sense; a business woman, 
keen and practical ; could encounter sharp 
hands in sharp trades ; could buy or sell 
hogs, calves, or beasts with any farmer 
or butcher in the country ; yet no match 
for a cunning fool. She had enshrined an 
idol in her heart; and that heart adored 
it and clung to it, though the superior 
head saw through it, dreaded it, despised 
it. 

No wonder three years of this had 
drawn a tell-tale wrinkle across the pol- 
ished brow. 


Phoebe Dale had not received a letter 
for some days: that roused her suspicion 
and stung her jealousy ; she came up to 
London by fast train, and down to Graves- 
end directly. 

She had a thick veil that concealed her 
features ; and, with a little inquiring and 
bribing, she soon found out that Mr. Fal- 
con was there with a showy dog-cart. 


OF CHARLES 


READE. 


““Ah!”* thought Phoebe, ‘‘ he has won a 
little money at play or pigeon-shooting ; 
so now he has no need of me.”’ 

She took lodgings opposite him, but 
observed nothing till this very morning, 
when she saw him throw off his dressing- 
gown all ina hurry and fling on his coat. 
She tied on her bonnet as rapidly, and 
followed him until she discovered the object 
of his pursuit. It was a surprise to her, 
and a puzzle, to see another man step in, 
as if to take her part. But, as Reginald 
still followed the loitering pair, she fol- 
lowed Reginald, till he turned and found 
her at his heels, white and lowering. 

She confronted him in threatening si- 
lence for some time, during which he pre- 
pared his defense. 

““So it is a lady this time,’’ said she, in 
her low, rich voice, sternly. 

SS ie ae 

“* Yes, and I should say she is bespoke. 
That tall, fine-built gentleman. But I 
suppose you care no more for his feelings 
than you do for mine.”’ 

‘‘Phoebe,”’ said the egotist, “‘I will not 
try to deceive you. You have often said 
you are my true friend.’’ 

«¢ And I think I have proved it.’ 

“That you have. Well, then, be my 
true friend now. lam in love—really in 
love—this time. You and I only torment 
each other; let us part friends. There 
are plenty of farmers in Kssex that would 
jump at you. As for me, I[’ll tell you the 
truth ; 1 have run through every farth- 
ing; my estate mortgaged beyond its 
value—two or three writs out against me 
—that is why I slipped down here. My 
only chance is to marry Money. Her 
father knows I have land, and he knows 
nothing about the mortgages ; she is his 
only daughter. Don’t stand in my way, 
that isa good girl; be my friend as you 
always were. Hang it all, Phoebe, can’t 
you say a word to a fellow that is driven 
into a corner, instead of glaring at me 
like that: there, I know it is ungrateful 
—but what can a fellow do? IL must 
live like a gentleman, or else take a dose 
of prussic acid ; you don’t want to drive 
me to that. Why, you proposed to part, 


last time, yourself.” 


A SIMPLETON. 


She gave him one majestic, indescrib- 
able look, that made even his callous 
heart quiver, and turned away. 

Then the scamp admired her for despis- 
ing him, and could not bear to lose her. 
He followed her, and put forth all those 
powers of persuading and soothing which 
had so often proved irresistible. But this 
time it was in vain. The insult was too 
savage and his egotism too brutal for 
honeyed phrases to blind her. . 

After enduring it a long time with a 
silent shudder, she turned and shook him 
fiercely off her, like some poisonous rep- 
tile. 

“Do you want me to kill you? Td 
liever kill myself for loving such a thing 
as thow. Go thy ways, man, and let me 
go mine.”’ In her passion, she dropped 
her cultivation for once, and went back 
to the thou and thee of her grandam. 

He colored up, and looked spiteful 
enough; but he soon recovered his cyni- 
cal egotism, and went off whistling an 
operatic passage. 

She crept to her lodgings, and buried 
her face in her pillow, and rocked herself 
to and fro for hours in the bitterest agony 
the heart can feel, groaning over her 
great affection wasted, flung into the 
dirt. 

While she was thus, she heard a little 
commotion. She came to the window 
and saw Falcon, exquisitely dressed, 
drive off in his dog-cart, attended by 
the acclamations of eight boys. She 
saw ata glance he was going courting. 
Her knees gave way under her; and, 
such is the power of the mind, this 
stalwart girl lay weak as water on the 
sofa, and had not the power to go home, 
though just then she had but one wish, 
one hope, to see her idol’s face no more, 
nor hear his wheedling tongue, that had 
ruined her peace. 


The exquisite Mr. Falcon was received 
by Rosa Lusignan with a certain tremor 
that flattered his hopes. He told her, in 
charming language, how he had admired 
her at first sight, then esteemed her, then 
loved her. 

She blushed and panted, and showed 


235 


more than once a desire to interrupt him, 
but was too polite. She heard him out, 
with rising dismay, and he offered her 
his hand and heart. 

But, by this time, she had made up her 
mind what to say. ‘‘Oh, Mr. Falcon! ”’ 
she cried, ‘‘how can you speak to me in 
this way? Why, I’m engaged! Didn’t 
you know ?’’ 

“No; and [ am sure you are not, or 
you would never have given me the en- 
couragement you have.”’ 

‘Oh, all engaged young ladies flirt—a 
little! and everybody here knows I am 
engaged to Dr. Staines.’’ 

‘«“Why, I never saw him here!” 

Rosa’s tact was a quality that came 
and went; so she blushed and faltered 
out, ‘‘ We had a little tiff, as lovers will.’’ 

‘And you did me the honor to select 
me as cat’s-paw, to bring him on again. 
Was not that rather heartless ? ”’ 

Rosa’s fitful tact returned to her. 

*‘Oh, sir, do you think so illof me! I 
am not heartless, Iam only unwise. And 
you are so superior to the people about 
you I could not help appreciating you: 
and I thought you knew I was engaged ; 
and so I was less on my guard. I hope I 
shall not lose your esteem, though I have 
no right to anything more. Ah! I see 
by your face I have behaved very ill: 
pray forgive me.’’ 

And with this she turned on the waters 
of the Nile, better known to you perhaps 
as *‘ crocodile tears.”’ . 

Falcon was a gentleman on the surface 
and knew he should only make matters 
worse by quarreling with her. So he 
ground his teeth, and said, ‘‘ May your 
own heart never feel the pangs you have 
inflicted! I shall love you and remember 
you till my dying day.”’ 

He bowed ceremoniously and left her. 
‘““ Ay,’ said he to himself, ‘“‘I will re- 
member you, you heartless jilt, and the 
man you have jilted me for. Staines is 
his d——d name, is it? ”’ 

He drove back crestfallen, bitter, and, 
for once in his life, heart-sick, and drew 
up at his lodgings. Here he found at- 
tendants waiting to receive him. 

A sheriff’s officer took his dog-cart and 


236 WORKS 
horse under a judgment; the disturbance 
this caused collected a tidy crowd, gap- 
ing and grinning, and brought Phoebe’s 
white face and eyes swollen with weeping 
to the window. 

Falcon saw her and brazened it out. 
“Take them,’’ said he, with an oath. 
“‘T’ll have a better turn-out by to-mor- 
row, breakfast time.’’ 

The crowd cheered him for his spirit. 

He got down, lit a cigar, chaffed the 
officer and the crowd, and was, on the 
whole, admired. 

Then another officer. who had been 
hunting him in couples with the other, 
stepped forward and took him for the 
balance of a judgment debt. 

Then the swell’s cigar fell out of his 
mouth, and he was seriously alarmed. 

‘Why, Cartwright,’’ said he, ‘‘ this is 
too bad! You promised not to see me 
this month. You passed me full in the 
Strand.”’ 

‘You are mistaken, sir,’’ said Cart- 
wright, with sullen irony, ‘‘I’ve got a 
twin brother; a many takes him for me, 
till they finds the difference.’’ Then, low- 
ering his voice, ‘“‘ What call had you to 
boast in your club you had made it right 
with Bill Cartwright, and he’d never see 
you? That got about, and so I was 
bound to see you or lose my bread. 
There’s one or two I don’t see; but then 
they are real gentlemen, and thinks of me 
as well as theirselves, and doesn’t blab.’’ 

‘““T must have been drunk,’’ said Fal- 
con apologetically. 

“‘More likely blowing a cloud. When 
you young gents gets a-smoking together 
you’d tell on your own mothers. Come 
along, colonel; off we go to Merri- 
mashee.”’ 


“Why, it is only twenty-six pounds. | 


I have paid the rest.”’ 


‘‘ More than that; there’s the costs.’ | 


“Come in, and I'll settle it.’’ 

‘<All right, sir; Jem, watch the 
back.”’ 

“*Oh, I shall not try that game with a 
sharp hand like you, Cartwright.”’ 

‘<You had better not, sir,”’ said Cart- 
wright; but he was softened a little by 
the compliment. 


4 


OF CHARLES 


READE. 


When they were alone, Falcon began 
by saying it was a bad job for him. 

“Why, I thought you was a-going to 
pay it all in a moment !”’ 

“‘Tcan’t; but Ihave got a friend over 
the way that could, if she chose. She 
has always got money somehow.”’ 

‘Oh! if it is a she, it is all right.”’ 

“7 don’t know. She has quarreled 
with me; but give me a little time. 
Here, have a glass of sherry and a bis- 
cuit, while I try it on.”’ 

Having thus muffled Cartwright, this 
man of the world opened his window and 
looked out. The crowd had followed the 
captured dog-cart, so he had the street 
to himself. He beckoned to Phebe ; 
and, after considerable hesitation, she 
opened her window. 

‘‘Phoebe,”’ said he, in tones of tender 
regret, admirably natural and sweet, ‘I 
shall never offend you again; so forgive 
me this once. I have given that girl 
up.” 

‘Not you,’’ said Phoebe sullenly. 

‘‘Indeed I have. After our quarrel I 
started to propose to her, but I had not 
the heart. I came back and left her.’’ 

‘¢Time will show. If it is not her, it 
will be some other, you false, heartless 
villain.”’ 

“¢Come, I say, don’t be so hard on me 
in trouble. Iam going to prison.”’ 

“So I suppose.’’ 

“Ah, but it is worse than you think! 
I am only taken for a paltry thirty 
pounds or so.”’ 

‘‘ Thirty-three, fifteen, five,’? suggested 
Cartwright, in a muffled whisper, his 
mouth being full of biscuit. 

‘But once they get me to a spong- 
ing-house, detainers will pour in, and 
my cruel creditors will confine me for 
life.”’ 

‘It is the best place for you. It will 
put a stop to your wickedness, and I 
shall be at peace. That’s what I have 
never known, night or day, this three 
years.”’ 

** But you will not be happy if you see 
me go to prison before your eyes. Were 
you ever inside a prison? Just think 


what it must be to be cooped up in those 


A SIMPLETON. 


cold grim cells all alone ; for they use a 
debtor like a criminal, now.”’ 

Phoebe shuddered ; but she said bravely, 
‘Well, tell them you have been a-court- 
ing. There was a time I’d have died 
sooner than see a hair of your head 
hurt; but it is all over now: you have 
worn me out.’’ 

Then she began to cry. 

Falcon heaved a deep sigh. ‘‘Itis no 
more than I deserve,”’ said he. ‘“T’ll 
pack up my things and go with the officer. 
Give me one kind word at parting; and 
Pll think of it in my prison night and 
day.”’ 

He withdrew from the window with 
another deep sigh, told Cartwright, 
cheerfully, it was all right, and pro- 
ceeded to pack up his traps. 

Meantime Phoebe sat at her window 
and cried bitterly. Her words had been 
braver than her heart. 

Falcon managed to pay the trifle he 
owed for the lodgings; and presently he 
came out with Cartwright, and the at- 
tendant called a cab. His things were 
thrown in, and Cartwright invited him to 
follow. Then he looked up and cast a 
genuine look of terror and misery at 
Phoebe. He thought she would have 
relented before this. 

Her heart gave way: I am afraid it 
would, even without that piteous and 
mute appeal. She opened the window, 
and asked Mr. Cartwright if he would be 
good enough to come and speak to her. 

Cartwright committed his prisoner to 
the subordinate, and knocked at the door 
of Phoebe’s lodgings. She came down 
herself and let him in. She led the way 
upstairs, motioned him to a seat, sat down 
by him, and began to cry again. She 
was thoroughly unstrung. 

Cartwright was human, and muttered 
some words of regret that a poor fellow 
must do his duty. 

‘Oh, it is not that !’’ sobbed Pheebe ; 
““T can find the money. I have found 
more for him than that many’s the time.’’ 
Then, drying her eyes, ‘‘ But you must 
know the world: and I dare say you can 
see how ’tis with me.”’ 

“‘T can,”’ said Cartwright gravely. ‘<I 


237 


overheard you and him; and, my girl, if 
you take my advice, why, let him go. 
He is a gentleman skin deep, and dresses 
well, and can palaver a girl, no doubt; 
but, bless your heart! I can see at a 
glance he is not worth your little finger 
—an honest, decent young woman like 
you. Why, it is like butter fighting with 
stone! Let him go; or I will tell you 
what it is, you will hang for him some 
day, or else make away with yourself.’’ 

‘* Ay, sir,’’ said Phoebe, “‘ that’s likelier ; 
and, if Iwas to let him go to prison, I 
should sit me down and think of his part- 
ing look: and I should fling myself into 
the water for him before 1 was a day 
older.”’ 

‘“Ye mustn’t do that, anyway. 
there’s life there’s hope.”’ 

Upon this, Phoebe put him a question, 
and found him ready to do anything for 
her, in reaSson—provided he was paid for 
it. And the end of it all was, the prisoner 
was conveved to London. Phoebe got the 
requisite sum; Falcon was deposited in 
a third-class carriage bound for Essex. 
Phceebe paid his debt, and gave Cart- 
wright a present; and away rattled the 
train conveying the handsome egotist 
into temporary retirement, to wit, at a 
village five miles from the Dales’ farm. 
She was too ashamed of her young gen- 
tleman and herself to be seen with him in 
her native village. On the road down, 
he was full of little practical attentions ; 
she received them coldly. His mellifluous 
mouth was often at her ear, pouring 
thanks and praises into it; she never 
vouchsafed a word of reply. All she did 
was to shudder now and then, and cry at 
intervals. Yet, whenever he left her side, 
her whole body became restless; and, 
when he came back to her, a furtive thrill 
announced the insane complacency his 
bare contact gave her. Surely of all the 
forms in which love torments the heart, 
this was the most terrible and pitiable. 


While 


Mr. Lusignan found his daughter in 
tears. 

«Why, what is the matter now?”’ 
said he, a little peevishly. ‘‘ We have 
had nothing of this sort of thing lately.’’ 


238 WORKS 

‘Papa, it is because I have miscon- 
ducted myself. lama foolish, imprudent 
girl. I have been flirting with Mr. Fal- 
con; and he has taken a cruel advantage 
of it— proposed to me, this very after- 
noon, actually !” 

‘Has he? Well, he is a fine fellow, 
and has a landed estate in Norfolk. 
There’s nothing like land. They may 
well call it real property ; there is some- 
thing to show. You can walk on it, and 
ride on it, and look out of window at it: 
that 2s property.”’ 

‘Oh, papa! What are you saying? 
Would you have me marry one man when 
I belong to another? ”’ 

‘* But you don’t belong to any one, ex- 
cept to me.”’ 

“Oh, yes, I do! 
Christopher. ”’ 

‘“Why, you dismissed him before my 
very eyes; and very ill you behaved, 
begging your pardon! The man was 
your able physician and your best friend, 
and said nothing that was not for your 
good; and you treated him like a dog.’’ 

‘¢Yes, but he has apologized.’’ 

«What for? for being treated like a 
dog ?”’ 

‘Oh, don’t say so, papa ! At all events, 
he has apologized, as a gentleman should 
whenever—whenever—”’ 

‘¢ Whenever a lady is in the wrong.”’ 

‘«“Don’t, papa; and | have asked him 
to dinner.”’ 

‘«“With all my heart. 
right glad to see him again. 
him abominably.”’ 

“But vou need nc. keep saying so,”’ 
whined Rosa. ‘‘ And that is not all, dear 
papa; the worst of it is, Mr. Falcon pro- 
posing to me has opened my eyes. I am 
not fit to be trusted alone. Iam too fond 
of dancing ; and flirting will follow some- 
how. Oh, think how ill I was a few 
months ago, and how unhappy you were 
about me! They were killing me. He 
came and saved me. Yes, papa, I owe 
all this health and strength to Christo- 
pher. I did take them off the very next 
day, and see the effect of it, and my long 
walks. I owe him my life, and, what I 
value far more, my good looks. La! I 


I belong to my dear 


I shall be down- 
You used 


OF CHARLES READE. 


| wish I had not told you that; and, after 


all this, don’t I belong to my Christo- 
pher? How could I be happy, or respect 
myself, if I married any one else? And 
oh, papa! he looks wan and worn. He 
has been fretting for his simpleton. Oh, 
dear! I mustn’t think of that; it makes 
me cry; and you don’t like scenes, do 
you? ’’ 

** Hate ’em !”’ 

‘Well, then,’’ said Rosa coaxingly, 
‘*T’ll tell you how to end them. Marry 
your simpleton to the only man who is fit 
to take care of her. Oh, papa! think of 
his deep, deep affection for me, and pray 
don’t snub him if—by any chance—after 
dinner—he should happen to ask you— 
something.”’ 

‘Oh! then it is possible that, by the 
merest chance, the gentleman you have 
accidentally asked to dinner may, by 
some strange fortuity, be surprised into 
asking me a second time for something 
very much resembling my daughter’s 
hand, eh? ’’ 

Rosa colored high. ‘‘ He might, you 
know. How can I tell what gentlemen 
will say when the ladies have retired, and 
they are left alone with—with—”’ 

‘With the bottle. Ay, that’s true! 
when the wine is in, the wit is out.”’ 

Said Rosa, ‘* Well, if he should happen 
to be so foolish, pray think of me ; of all 
we owe him, and how much JI love him, 
and ought to love him.’’? She then be- 
stowed a propitiatory kiss, and ran off to 
dress for dinner: it was a much longer 
operation to-day than usual. 

Dr. Staines was punctual. Mr. Lusig- 
nan commented favorably on that. 

‘‘ He always is,’’ said Rosa eagerly. 

They dined together. Mr. Lusignan 
chatted freely; but Staines and Rosa 
were under a feeling of restraint, Staines 
in particular: he could not help feeling 
that before long his fate must be settled. 
He would either obtain Rosa’s hand, or 
have to resign her to some man of fort- 
une who would step in; for beauty such 
as hers could not long lack brilliant offers. 
Longing, though dreading, to know his 
fate, he was glad when dinner ended. 

Rosa sat with them a little while after 


A SIMPLETON. 


dinner, then rose, bestowed another pro- 
pitiatory kiss on her father’s head, and 
retired with a modest blush, and a look 
at Christopher that was almost divine. 

It inspired him with the courage of 
lions; and he commenced the attack at 
once. 


CHAPTER V. 


‘Mr. LUSIGNAN,”’ said /he, ‘‘ the last 
time I was here, you gave me some hopes 
that you might be prevailed on to trust 
that angel’s health and happiness to my 
care.” 

‘Well, Dr. Staines, I will not beat 
about the bush with you. My judgment 
is still against this marriage: you need 
not look so alarmed ; it does not follow I 
shall forbid it. I feel I have hardly a 
right to; for my Rosa might be in her 
grave now but for you. And another 
thing, when I interfered between you 
two, lhad no proof you were a man of 
ability : I had only your sweetheart’s 
word for that; and I never knew a case 
before where a young lady’s swan did not 
turn out a goose. Your rare ability 
gives.you another chance in the profes- 
sional battle that is before you; indeed, 
it puts a different face on the whole mat- 
ter. I still think it premature. Come, 
now, would it not be much wiser to wait, 
and secure a good practice before you 
marry a mere child? There—there—I 
only advise; I don’t dictate: you shall 
settle it together, you two wiseacres. 
Only I must make one positive condition : 
I have nothing to give my child during 
my lifetime; but one thing I have done 
for her; years ago I insured my life for 
six thousand pounds; and you must do 
the same. I will not have her thrown on 
the world a widow, with a child or two 
perhaps, to support, and not a farthing ; 
you know the insecurity of mortal life.” 

‘‘Tdo, Ido. Why, of course I will in- 
sure my life, and pay the annual premium 


239 


out of my little capital until income flows 
in ! AS / 

‘© Will you hand me over a sum suf- 
ficient to pay that premium for five 
years ?”’ 

‘‘With pleasure.’’ 

‘*Then I fear,’’ said the old gentleman 
with a sigh, ‘‘ my opposition to the match 
must cease here. I still recommend you 
to wait: but, there, | might just as well 
advise fire and tow to live neighbors, and 
keep cool.’’ 

To show the injustice of this simile, 
Christopher Staines started up, with his 
eyes all aglow, and cried out rapturously, 
<‘Oh, sir! may I tell her? ”’ 

“Yes, you may tell her,” said Lusig- 
nan with asmile. ‘‘Stop! what are you 
going to tell her ?”’ 

‘‘That you consent, sir. 
you! God bless you! Oh!” 

‘¢Yes, but that I advise you to wait.’’ 

“T’ll tell her all,’’ said Staines, and 
rushed out even as he spoke, and upset a 
heavy chair with a loud thud. 

«Ah! ah!’ cried the old gentleman in 
dismay, and put his fingers in his ears. 
“Too late. 1 see,’ said he, ‘‘ there will 
be no peace and quiet now till they are 
out of the house.’’ He lighted a soothing 
cigar to counteract the fracas. 

* Poor little Rosa !—a child but yester- 
day, and now to encounter the cares of a 
wife, and perhaps a mother. Ah! she is 
but young, but young.”’ 

The old gentleman prophesied truly ; 
from that moment he had no peace till he 
withdrew all semblance of dissent, and 
even of procrastination. 

Christopher insured his life for six 
thousand pounds, and assigned the policy 
to his wife. Four hundred pounds was 
handed to Mr. Lusignan to pay the 
premiums until the genius of Dr. Staines 
should have secured him that large pro- 
fessional income, which does not come all 
at once even to the rare physician, who is 
Capax Hificax Sagax. 

The wedding-day was named. The 
bridemaids were selected, the guests in- 
vited. None refused but Uncle Philip. 
He declined, in his fine bold hand, to 


God bless 


countenance in person an act of folly he 


240 WORKS 
disapproved. Christopher put his letter 
away with a momentary sigh, and would 
not show it Rosa. All other letters they 
read together—charming pastime of that 
happy period. Presents poured in. Sil- 
ver tea-pots, coffee-pots, sugar-basins, 
cream-jugs, fruit-dishes, silver-gilt ink- 
stands, albums, photograph-books, little 
candlesticks, choice little services of 
china, shell salt-cellars in a case lined 
with maroon velvet; a Bible, superb in 
binding and clasps and everything, but 
the text—that was illegible; a silk scarf 
from Benares; a gold chain from Delhi, 
six feet long or nearly; a maltese neck- 
lace; a ditto in exquisite filigree, from 
Genoa; English brooches, a trifle too big 
and brainless: apostle-spoons; a treble- 
lined parasol, with ivory stick and 
handle; an ivory card-case, richly 
carved ; work-box of sandal-wood and 
ivory, etc. Mr. Lusignan’s city friends, 
as usual with these gentlemen, sent the 
most valuable things. Every day one or 
two packages were delivered; and, on 
opening them, Rosa invariably uttered a 
peculiar scream of delight, and her 
father put his fingers in his ears; yet 
there was music in this very scream—if 
he would only have listened to it candid- 
ly, instead of fixing his mind on his vague 
theory of screams—so formed was she to 
please the ear as well as eye. 

At last came a parcel she opened and 
stared at, smiling: and coloring like a 
rose, but did not scream, being too dum- 
founded and perplexed ; for lo! a tea-pot 
of some base material, but simple and 
elegant in form, being an exact repro- 
duction of a melon; and inside this tea- 
pot a canvas bag containing ten guineas 
in silver, and a wash-leather bag contain- 
ing twenty guineas in gold, and a slip of 
paper, which Rosa, being now half-recov- 
ered from her stupefaction, read out to 
her father and Dr. Staines— 


<“People that buy presents blindfold 
give duplicates and triplicates; and men 
seldom choose to a woman’s taste: so be 
pleased to accept the inclosed tea-leaves, 
and buy for yourself. The tea-pot you 
can put on the hob; for it is nickel.”’ 


OF CHARLES READE. 


Rosa looked sore puzzled again. 

‘‘Papa,’’ said she timidly, ‘‘have we 
any friend that is—a little—deranged ? ”’ 

‘Adoum 

‘Oh, then, that accounts ! ”’ 

“Why no, love,’’ said Christopher. 
“‘T have heard of much learning mak- 
ing a man mad, but never of much 
good sense.’’ 

‘‘What! Do you call this sensible ? ”’ 

“Dons yours « 

<‘T’ll read it again,’”’ said Rosa. ‘‘ Well 
—yes—lI declare—it is not so mad as I 
thought; but it is very eccentric.”’ 

Lusignan suggested there was nothing 
so eccentric aS common-sense, especially 
in time of wedding:!  “his,7? saidmeane: 
‘“‘comes from the city. It is a friend of 
mine, some old fox: he is throwing dust 
in your eyes with his reasons. His real 
reason was that his time is money; it 
would have cost the old rogue a hundred 
pounds’ worth of time—you know the 
city, Christopher—to go out and choose 
the girl a present; so he has sent his 
clerk out with a check to buy a pewter 
teapot, and fill it with specie.’’ 

«“Pewter!’’ cried Rosa. ‘“ No “such 
thing! It’s nickel. What is nickel, I 
wonder ? ”’ 

The handwriting afforded no clew, so 
there the discussion ended: but it was a 
nice little mystery, and very convenient, 
made conversation. Rosa had many an 
animated discussion about it with her 
female friends. 

The wedding-day came at last. The 
sun shone—actually, as Rosa observed. 
The carriages drove.up. The bridemaids, 
principally old school-fellows and im- 
passioned correspondents of Rosa, were 
pretty, and dressed alike, and delight- 
fully: but the bride was peerless; her 
southern beauty literally shone in that 
white satin dress and veil, and her head 
was regal with the crown of orange 
blossoms. Another crown she had, true 
virgin modesty. A low murmur burst 
from the men the moment they saw her; 
the old women forgave her beauty on the 
spot, and the young women almost par- 
doned it ; she was so sweet and womanly, 


_and so sisterly to her own sex. 


;. DBRARY 
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URIVERSITY OF ILLNO's 


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‘““WINE LOVE! CHRISTOPHER, BEG MY PARDON.’ 
—A Simpleton, Chapter IV. 


Reape, Volume Eiczht. 


A SIMPLETON. 


When they started for the church, she 
began to tremble, she scarce knew why ; 
and when the solemn words were said, 
and the ring was put on her finger, she 
cried a little, and looked half-imploringly 
at her bridemaids once, as if scared at 
leaving them for an untried and myste- 
rious life with no woman near. 

They were married. Then came the 
breakfast, that hour of uneasiness and 
blushing to such a bride as this; but at 
last she was released. She sped up- 
stairs, thanking goodness it was over. 
Down came her last box. The bride fol- 
lowed in a plain traveling dress, which 
her glorious eyes and brows and her rich 
glowing cheeks seemed to illumine. She 
was handed into the carriage ; the bride- 
groom followed. All the young guests 
clustered about the door, armed with 
white shoes—slippers are gone by. 

They started: the ladies flung their, 
white shoes right and left with relig- 
ious impartiality, except that not one 
of their missiles went at the object. The 
men, more skillful, sent a shower on to the 
roof of the carriage, which is the lucky 
spot. The bride kissed her hand, and 
managed to put off crying, though it 
cost her a struggle. The party hur- 
rahed. Enthusiastic youths gathered 
fallen shoes, and ran and hurled them 
again with cheerful yells; and away 
went the happy pair, the bride lean- 
ing sweetly and confidingly with both 
her white hands on the bridegroom’s 
shoulder, while he dried the tears that 
would run now at leaving home and 
parent forever, and kissed her often, 
and encircled her with his strong arm, 
and murmured comfort and love and 
pride and joy and sweet vows of life- 
long tenderness into her ears, that soon 
stole nearer his lips to hear, and the 
fair cheek grew softly to his shoulder. 


CHAPTER VI. 


DR. STAINES and Mrs. Staines visited 
France, Switzerland, and the Rhine, and 


241 


passed a month of Elysium, before they 
came to London to face their real destiny 
and fight the battle of life. 

And here, methinks a reader.of novels 
may, perhaps, cry out and say, ‘‘ What 
manner of man is this, who marries his 
hero and heroine, and then, instead of 
leaving them happy for life, and at rest 
from his uneasy pen, and all their other 
troubles, flows coolly on with their ad- 
ventures ? ”’ 

To this I can only reply that the old 
English novel is no rule to me, and life 
is; and I respectfully propose an experi- 
ment: catch eight old married people, 
four of each sex, and say unto them, 
‘‘Sir,’’ or ‘‘Madame, did the more re- 
markable events of your life come to you 
before marriage or after?’’ Most of 
them will say ‘‘ after,’’ and let that be 
my excuse for treating the marriage of 
Christopher Staines and Rosa Lusignan 
as merely one incident in their lives—an 
incident which, so far from ending their 
story, led by degrees to more striking 
events than any that occurred to them 
before they were man and wife. 

They returned then from their honey- 
tour; and Staines, who was methodical, 
and kept a diary, made the following 
entry therein :— 

“We have now a life of endurance and 
self-denial and economy before us: we 
have to rent a house, and furnish it, and 
live in it, until professional income shall 
flow in and make all things easy; and 
we have two thousand five hundred 
pounds left to do it with.” 

They came to a family hotel; and Doc- 
tor Staines went out, directly after break- 
fast, to look for a house. Acting on a 
friend’s advice, he visited the streets and 
places north of Oxford Street, looking for 
a good commodious house adapted to his 
business. He found three or four at fair 
rents, neither cheap nor dear, the dis- 
trict being respectable and_ rather 
wealthy, but no longer fashionable. He 
came home with his notes, and found 
Rosa, beaming in a crisp pezgnoir, and 
her lovely head its natural size and shape, 
high-bred and elegant. He sat down, 
and with her hand in his, proceeded to 


242 


describe the houses to her, when a waiter 
threw open the door—‘‘ Mrs. John Cole.’’ 

“Florence !’’ cried Rosa, starting up. 

In flowed Florence: they both uttered a 
little squawk of delight, and went at each 
other like two little tigresses, and kissed 
in swift alternation with a singular ardor, 
drawing their crests back like snakes, 
and then darting them forward and in- 
flicting what, to the male philosopher 
looking on, seemed hard kisses, violent 
kisses, rather than the tender ones to be 
expected from two tender creatures em- 
bracing each other. 

‘ Darling,’’ said Rosa, “I knew you 
would be the first. Didn’t I tell you 
so, Christopher ? My husband, my darl- 
ing Florry! Sit down, love, and tell me 
everything : he has just been looking out 
fora house. Ah! you have got all that 
over long ago: she has been married six 
months. Florry, you are handsomer than 
ever; and what a beautiful dress! Ah, 
London is the place. Real Brussels, I 
declare ;’’ and she took hold of her 
friend’s lace and gloated on it. 

Christopher smiled good-naturedly, and 
said, ‘‘I dare say you ladies have a good 
deal to say to each other.’’ 

“Oceans !’’ said Rosa. 

**T will go and hunt houses again.’’ 

‘‘'There’s a good husband,’’ said Mrs. 
Cole, as soon as the door closed on him; 
‘‘and such a fine man. Why, he must 
be six feet! Mineis rather short. But 
he is very good ; refuses me nothing. My 
will is law.”’ 

“That is all right, you are so sensible; 
but I want governing a little: and I like 
it—actually. Did the dressmaker find it, 
dear ? ”’ 

“Oh, no! I had it by me. I bought 
it at Brussels, on our wedding-tour: it 
is dearer there than in London.”’ 

She said this, as if ‘‘ dearer’’ and “ bet- 
ter ’’ were Synonymous. 

‘* But about your house, Rosie dear ? ”’ 

“Yes, darling, I'll tell you all about 
it. I never saw a moire this shade be- 
fore; 1 don’t care for them in general ; 
but this is so dzstzngue.”’ 

Florence rewarded her with a kiss. 


‘The house,’’? said Rosa. ‘‘Oh! he 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


has seen one in Portman Street, and one 
in Gloucester Place.’’ 

‘¢QOh, that will never do!’ cried Mrs. 
Cole. “ Itis no use being a physician in 
those out-of-the-way places. He must be 
in Mayfair.’’ 

“Must he? ”’ 

‘Of course. Besides, then my John- 
nie can call him in, when they are just 
going to die. Johnnie is a general prac., 
and makes two thousand a year; and he 
shall call your one in: but he must live 
in Mayfair. Why, Rosa, vou would not 
be such a goose as to live in those places ! 
they are quite gone by.”’ 

‘‘T shall do whatever you advise me, 
dear. Oh, what a comfort to have a dear 
friend! and six months married, and knows 
things. How richly it is trimmed! Why, 
it is nearly all trimmings ! ”’ 

«*'That is the fashion.’’ 

Te 

And, after that big word, there was no 
more to be said. 

These two ladies in their conversation 
gravitated toward dress, and fell flat on 
it every half minute. That great and 
elevating topic held them by a silken 
cord: but it allowed them to flutter up- 
ward into other topics; and in those in- 
tervals, numerous though brief, the lady 
who had been married six months found 
time to instruct the matrimonial novice 
with great authority, and even a shade of 
pomposity. ‘‘My dear, the way ladies — 
and gentlemen get a house—in the first 
place, you don’t go about yourself like 
that, and yo never go to the people 
themselves, or you are sure to be taken 
in, but to a respectable house-agent.”’ 

“Yes, dear, that must be the best way, 
one would think.’’ 

‘Of course it is; and you ask for a 
house in Mayfair; and he shows you 
several, and recommends you the best, 
and sees you are not cheated.’’ 

‘Thank you, love,’’ said Rosa: “‘now 
I know what to do; I'll not forget a 
word. “And the train is so beautifully 
shaped! Ah, it is only in London or 
Paris they can make a dress flow behind 
like that,’’ etc., etc. 

Dr. Staines came back to dinner in 


A SIMPLETON. 


good spirits: he had found a house in 
Harewood Square; good entrance hall, 
where his gratuitous patients might sit 
on benches; good dining-room, where 
his superior patients might wait, and 
zood library, to be used as a consult- 
ing-room. Rent only £85 per annum. 

But Rosa told him that would never 
do; a physician must be in the fashion- 
able part of the town. 

‘¢HKventually,’’ said Christopher; ‘‘ but 
surely at first starting; and you know 
they say little boats should not go too 
far from shore.’’ 

Then Rosa repeated all her friend’s 
arguments, and seemed so unhappy at 
the idea of not living near her, that 
Staines, who had not yet said the hard 
word “No” to her, gave in, consoling 
his prudence with the reflection that, 
after all, Mr. Cole could put many a 
guinea in his way; for Mr. Cole was 
middle-aged—though his wife was young 
—and had really a very large practice. 

So next day the newly wedded pair 
called on a house-agent in Mayfair, and 
his son and partner went with them to 
several places. The rents of houses 
equal to that in Harewood Square were 
£300 a year at least, and a premium to 
boot. 

Christopher told him these were quite 
beyond the mark. ‘‘ Very well,” said the 
agent. ‘* Then I’ll show you a Bijou.”’ 

Rosa clapped her hands. ‘“ That is the 
thing for us. We don’t want a large 
house, only a beautiful one, and in May- 
fair.’’ 

«Then the Bijou will be sure to suit 
you.”’ 

He took them to the Bijou. 

The Bijou had a small dining-room 
with one very large window in two sheets 
of plate-glass and a projecting balcony 
full of flowers; a still smaller library, 
which opened on a square yard inclosed. 
Here were a great many pots, with flow- 
ers dead or dying from neglect. On the 
first floor a fair-sized drawing-room, and 
a tiny one at the back; on the second 
floor one good bedroom, and a dressing- 
room, or little bedroom; three garrets 
above. 


243 
Rosa was in ecstasies. ‘‘It is a nest,” 
said she. 

‘‘It is a bank-note,’’ said the agent, 
simulating equal enthusiasm, after his 
fashion. ‘“ You can always sell the lease 
again for more money.”’ 

Christopher kept cool. ‘I don’t want 
a house to sell, but to live in, and do my 
business; I am a physician. Now, the 
drawing-room is built over the entrance 
toamew. The back-rooms all look into 
amew: we shall have the eternal noise 
and smell of a mew. My wife’s rest will 
be broken by the carriages rolling in and 
out. The hall is fearfully small and 
stuffy. The rent is abominably high; 
and what is the premium for, I wonder ?”’ 

«* Always a premium in Mayfair, sir. 
A lease is property here: the gentleman 
is not acquainted with this part, madam.”’ 

‘“ Oh, yes, he is!’’ said Rosa, as boldly 
as a Six years’ wife; ‘‘he knows every- 
thing.’’ 

‘*Then he knows that a house of this 
kind at £130a year, in Mayfair, is a bank- 
note.’’ 

Staines turned to Rosa. ‘‘The poor 
patients, where am I to receive them ?”’ 

‘‘ In the stable,’’ suggested the house- 
agent. 

‘Oh!’ said Rosa, shocked. 

‘Well, then, the coach-house. Why, 
there’s plenty of room for a brougham 
and one horse, and fifty poor patients at 
a time. Beggars mustn’t be choosers. 
If vou give them physic gratis, that is 
enough: you ain’t bound to find ’em a 
palace to sit down in, and hot coffee and 
rump-steaks all around, doctor.’’ 

This tickled Rosa so that she burst out 
laughing, and thenceforward giggled at 
intervals, wit of this refined nature hav- 
ing all the charm of novelty for her. 

They inspected the stables, which were 
indeed the one redeeming feature in the 
horrid little Bijou: and then the agent 
would show them the kitchen and the 
new stove. He expatiated on this to 
Mrs. Staines. ‘‘ Cook a dinner for thirty 
people, madam.’’ 

‘** And there’s room for them to eat it 
—in the road,’’ said Staines. 

The agent reminded him there were 


244 WORKS OF 


larger places to be had by a very simple 
process; namely, paying for them. 

Staines thought of the large comfort- 
able house in Harewood Square. ‘* £130 
a year for this pokey little hole?” he 
groaned. 

66 Why, 
Bijou.”’ 

‘But it is too much for a bandbox.”’ 

Rosa laid her hand on his arm with an 
imploring glance. 

“«Well,’’ said he, ‘‘I’ll submit to the 
rent, but I really cannot give the pre- 
mium ; it is too ridiculous. He ought to 
bribe me to rent it, not I him.’’ 

‘“¢Can’t be done without, sir.”’ 

«Well, V’ll give £100, and no more.”’ 

‘<Tmpossible, sir.”’ 

‘‘“Then good-morning. Now, dearest, 
just come and see the house at Harewood 
Square; £85 and no premium.”’ 

‘Will you oblige me with your address, 
doctor ?”’ said the agent. 

“‘Dr. Staines, Morley’s Hotel.’’ 

And so they left Mayfair. 

Rosa sighed, and said, ‘‘ Oh, the nice 
little place! and we have lost it for 
£200.’ 

‘Two hundred pounds is a great deal 
for us to throw away.”’ 

‘* Being near the Coles would soon have 
made that up to you: and such a cozy 
little nest.”’ 

“Well, the house will not run away.”’ 

““ But somebody is sure to snap it up. 
It is a Bijou.’? She was disappointed, 
and half-inclined to pout. But she vented 
her feelings in a letter to her beloved 
Florry, and appeared at dinner as sweet 
as usual. 

During dinner, a note came from the 
agent, accepting Dr. Staines’s offer. He 
glozed the matter thus: he had persuaded 
the owner it was better to take a good 
tenant at a moderate loss than to let the 
Bijou be uninhabited during the present 
rainy season. An assignment of the 
lease, which contained the usual cove- 
nants, would be prepared immediately ; 
and Dr. Staines could have possession 
in forty-eight hours, by paying the 
premium. 

Rosa was delighted; and as soon as 


it is nothing at all for a 


CHARLES 


READE. 


dinner was over, and the waiters gone, 
she came and kissed Christopher. He 
smiled, and said, ‘‘ Well, you are pleased ; 
that is the principal thing. I have saved 
£200, and that is something. It will go 
toward furnishing.”’ 

«La, syesi@ygusaideshosa,; ““Letopepes 
We shall have to get furniture now. 
How nice!’’ It was a pleasure the man 
of forecast could have willingly dispensed 
with; but he smiled at her, and they 
discussed furniture. And Christopher, 
whose retentive memory had picked up a 
little of everything, said there were whole- 
sale upholsterers in the city, who sold 
cheaper than the West End houses; and 
he thought the best way was to measure 
the rooms in the Bijou, and go to the city 
with a clear idea of what they wanted, 
ask the prices of various necessary arti- 
cles, and then make a list, and demand a 
discount of fifteen per cent on the whole 
order, being so considerable and paid for 
in cash. 

Rosa acquiesced, and told Christopher 
he was the cleverest man in England. 

About nine o’clock Mrs. Cole came in 
to condole with her friend, and heard the 
good news. When Rosa told her how 
they thought of furnishing, she said, 
“Oh, no! you must not do that; you 
will pay double for everything! That is 
the mistake Johnnie and I made; and, 
after that, a friend of mine took me to 
the auction-rooms, and I saw everything 
sold. Oh, such bargains !—half, and less 
than half, their value. She has furnished 
her house almost entirely from sales; and 
she has the loveliest things in the world 
—such ducks of tables, and jardiniéres 
and things, and beautiful rare china: her 
house swarms with it, for an old song. A 
sale is the place, and then so amusing.”’ 

‘oY es but. said » Christophereusall 
should not like my wife to encounter a 
public room.”’ 

‘ Not alone, of course; but with me. 
La! Dr. Staines, they are too full of buy- 
ing and selling to trouble their heads 
about us.”’ 

“Qh, Christopher! do let me go with 
her. Am I always to be a child ?”’ 

Thus appealed to before a stranger, 


A SIMPLETON. 


Staines replied warmly, ‘‘No, dearest, 
no; you cannot please me better than by 
beginning life in earnest. 
ladies together can face an auction-room, 
go by all means; only I must ask you 
not to buy china, or ormolu, or anything 
that will break or spoil, but only solid, 
good furniture.’’ 

““Won’t you come with us? ”’ 

‘“No, or you might feel yourself in lead- 
ing-strings. Remember the Bijou is a 
small house ; choose your furniture to fit 
it ; and then we shall save something by 
its being so small.’’ 

This was Wednesday. There was a 
weekly sale in Oxford Street on Friday ; 
and the ladies made the appointment ac- 
cordingly. 

Next day, after breakfast, Christopher 
was silent and thoughtful a while, and at 
last said to Rosa, ‘‘I’ll show you I don’t 
look on you as a child: Pll consult you 
on a delicate matter.’’ 

Rosa’s eyes sparkled. 

‘It is about my Uncle Philip. He has 
been very cruel: he has wounded me 
deeply ; he has wounded me through my 
wife. I never thought he would refuse to 
come to our marriage.”’ 

““ And did he? You never showed me 
his letter.’’ 

“You were not my wife then. I kept 
an affront from you; but now you see, I 
keep nothing.”’ 

“‘ Dear Christie ! ’’ 

‘TJ am so happy, I have got over that 
sting—almost; and the memory of many 
kind acts come back to me; and—I don’t 
know what to do. It seems ungrateful 
not to visit him: it seems almost mean to 
call: 

““T’ll tell you; take me to see him di- 
rectly. He won’t hate us forever, if he 
sees us often. We may as well begin at 
once. Nobody hates me long.’’ 

Christopher was proud of his wife’s 
courage and wisdom. He kissed her, 
begged her to put on the plainest dress 
she could ; and they went together to call 
on Uncle Philip. 

When they got to his house in Glou- 
cester Place, Portman Square, Rosa’s 
heart began to quake ; and she was right 


If you two 


245 


glad when the servant said, ‘‘ Not at 
home.”’ 

They left their cards and address; and 
she persuaded Christopher to take her to 
the salesroom to see the things. 

A lot of brokers were there, like vul- 
tures ; and one after another stepped for- 
ward and pestered them to employ him in 
the morning. Dr. Staines declined their 
services civilly but firmly; and he and 
Rosa looked over a quantity of furniture, 
and settled what sort of things to buy. 

Another broker came up, and, whenever 
the couple stopped before an article, pro- 
ceeded to praise it as something most ex- 
traordinary. Staines listened in cold, 
satirical silence, and told his wife, in 
French, todo the same. Notwithstand- 
ing their marked disgust, the impudent, 
intrusive fellow stuck to them, and forced 
his venal criticism on them, and made 
them uncomfortable, and shortened their 
tour of observation. 

‘*T think I shall come with you to-mor- 
row,’ said Christopher, ‘‘ or I shall have 
these blackguards pestering you.”’ 

Oh, Florry will send them to the right 
about! She is as brave as a lion.”’ 

Next day Dr. Staines was sent for into 
the city at twelve, to pay the money, and 
receive the lease of the Bijou; and this 
and the taking possession occupied him 
till four o’clock, when he came to his 
hotel. 

Meantime, his wife and Mrs. Cole had 
gone to the auction-room. 

It was a large room, with a good sprink- 
ling of people, but not crowded, except 
about the table. At the head of this 
table, full twenty feet long, was the auc- 
tioneer’s pulpit; and the lots were 
brought in turn to the other end of the 
pulpit for sight and sale. 

“We must try and get a seat,’’ said 
the enterprising Mrs. Cole, and pushed 
boldly in. The timid Rosa followed 
strictly in her wake, and so evaded the 
human waves her leader clove. They were 
importuned at every step by brokers 
thrusting catalogues on them, with offers 
of their services, yet they soon got to the 
table. A gentleman resigned. one chair, 
a broker another, and they were seated. 


246 WORKS 

Mrs. Staines let down half her veil; 
but Mrs. Cole surveyed the company 
pointblank. 

The broker who had given up his seat, 
and now stood behind Rosa, offered her 
his catalogue. ‘‘No, thank you,” said 
Rosa, ‘‘1 have one;’’ and she produced 
it, and studied it, yet managed to look 
furtively at the company. 

There were not above a dozen private 
persons visible from where Rosa sat; per- 
haps aS many more in the whole room. 
They were easily distinguishable by their 
cleanly appearance. The dealers, male 
and female, were more or less rusty, 
greasy, dirty, aquiline. Not even the 
amateurs were brightly dressed: that 
fundamental error was confined to Mes- 
dames Cole and Staines. The experienced, 
however wealthy, do not hunt bargains in 
silk and satin. | 

The auctioneer called ‘‘ Lot 7.’’ Four 
saucepans, two trays, a kettle, a bootjack, 
and a towel-horse.”’ 

These were put up at two shillings, and 
speedily knocked down for five, to a fat 
old woman in a greasy velvet jacket ; 
blind industry had sewed bugles on it, not 
artfully, but agriculturally. 

“‘The lady on the left !’’ said the auc- 
tioneer to his clerk. That meant, “‘ Get 
the money.”’ 

The old lady plunged a huge paw into a 
huge pocket, and pulled out a huge hand- 
ful of coin—copper, silver, and gold, and 
paid for the lot ; and Rosa surveyed her 
dirty hands and mails with innocent dis- 
may. ‘‘Oh, what a dreadful creature !”’ 
she whispered; ‘‘and what can she want 
with those old rubbishy things? I sawa 
hole in one from here.’’ The broker over- 
heard, and said, ‘‘ She is a dealer, ma’am ; 
and the things were given away. She’ll 
sell them for a guinea, easy.”’ 

“‘Didn’t I tell you? ”’ said Mrs. Cole. 

Soon after this, the superior lots came 
on; and six very neat bedroom chairs 
were sold to all appearance for fifteen 
shillings. 

The next lot was identical ; and Rosa 
hazarded a bid, ‘‘ Sixteen shillings.’’ 

Instantly some dealer, one of the 
hooked-nose that gathered round each 


OF CHARLES READE. 


lot as it came to the foot of the table, 
cried, ‘‘ Kighteen shillings.”’ 

‘* Nineteen,’’ said Rosa. 

‘*A guinea,’’ said the dealer. 

“Don’t let it go,’’ said the broker be- 
hind her. ‘‘ Don’t let it go, ma’am.”’ 

She colored at the intrusion, and left off 
bidding directly, and addressed herself to 
Mrs. Cole. ‘‘ Why should I give so much, 
when the last were sold for fifteen shil- 
lings ?”’ 

The real reason was, that the first lot 
was not bid for at all except by the pro- 
prietor. However, the broker gave her a 
very different solution; he said, ‘“‘ The 
trade always runs up a lady or a gentle- 
man. Let me bid for you: they won’t 
run me up; they know better.’’ 

Rosa did not reply, but looked at Mrs. 
Cole. 

“Yes, dear,”’ said that lady, ‘‘ you had 
much better let him bid for you.”’ 

“Very well,’’ said Rosa. ‘* You can 
bid for this chest of drawers—Lot 25.”’ . 

When Lot 25 came on, the broker bid 
in the silliest possible way, if his object 
had been to get a bargain: he began to 
bid early and ostentatiously; the article 
was protected by somebody or other there 
present, who now, of course, saw his way 
clear. He ran it up audaciously; and it 
was purchased for Rosa at about the 
price it could have been bought for at a 
shop. 

The next thing she wanted was a set of 
oak chairs. 

They went up to twenty-eight pounds ; 
then she said, ‘‘I shall give no more, 
sir.’ 

‘‘ Better not lose them,” said the agent ; 
‘‘they are a great bargain,’’ and bid an- 
other pound for her on his own responsi- 
bility. They were still run up; and Rosa 
peremptorily refused to give any more. 
She lost them accordingly, by good luck. 
Her faithful broker looked blank; and so 
did the proprietor. 

But, as the sale proceeded, she being 
young, the competition, though most of it 
sham, being artful and exciting, and the 
traitor she employed constantly puffing 
every article, she was drawn into wishing 
for things, and bidding by her feelings. 


A SIMPLETON. 


Then her traitor played a game that 
has been played a hundred times, and the 
perpetrators never once lynched, as they 
ought to be, on the spot: he signalled a 
confederate with a hooked nose. The 
Jew rascal bid against the Christian 
scoundrel; and so they ran up the more 
enticing things to twice their value under 
the hammer. 

Rosa got flushed ; and her eye gleamed 
like a gambler’s, and she bought away 
like wild-fire. In which sport she caught 
sight of an old gentleman with little black 
eyes, that kept twinkling at her. 

She complained of these eyes to Mrs. 
Cole. 

‘““Why does he twinkle so? I can see 
it is at me, 1am doing something foolish 
—I know I am.”’ 

Mrs. Cole turned and fixed a haughty 
stare on the old gentleman. Would you 
believe it? Instead of sinking through 
the floor, he sat his ground, and retorted 
with a cool, clear grin. 

But now, whenever Rosa’s agent bid 
for her, and the other man of straw 


against him, the black eyes twinkled ; 


and Rosa’s courage began to ooze away. 
At last she said— 

“That is enough for one day. I shall 
go. Who could bear those eyes ? ” 

The broker took her address; so did 
the auctioneer’s clerk. The auctioneer 
asked her for no deposit; her beautiful, 
innocent, and high-bred face was enough 
for a man who was always reading faces 
and interpreting them. 

And so they retired. 

But this charming sex is like that same 
auctioneer’s .hammer, it cannot go ab- 
ruptly. It is always going—going—go- 
ing—a long time before it is gone. I 
think it would perhaps loiter at the door 
of a jail, with the order of release in its 
hand, after six years’ confinement. Get- 
ting up to go quenches in it the desire to 
go. So these ladies, having got up to go, 
turned and lingered, and hung fire so long 
that at last another set of oak chairs 
cameup. ‘‘Oh! I must see what those 
go for,’’ said Rosa, at the door. 

The bidding was mighty languid now 
Rosa’s broker was not stimulating it ; and 


247 


the auctioneer was just knocking down 
twelve chairs—oak and leather—and two 
arm-chairs, for twenty pounds, when, 
casting his eyes around, he caught sight 
of Rosa looking at him rather excited. 
He looked inquiringly at her. She nodded 
slightly ; he knocked them down to her 
at twenty guineas, and they were really 
a great bargain. 

“ 'Twenty-two,’’ cried a dealer. 

“Too late,’’ said the auctioneer. 

‘‘T spoke with the hammer, sir.’ 

«* After the hammer, Isaacs.’’ 

““S’help me God, we was together.”’ 

One or two more of his tribe confirmed 
this pious falsehood, and clamored to have 
them put up again. 

‘*Call the next lot,’’ said the auctioneer 
peremptorily. ‘‘ Make up your mind a 
little quicker next time, Mr. Isaacs; you 
have been long enough at it to know the 
value of oak and morocco.”’ 

Mrs. Staines and her friend now started 
for Morley’s Hotel, but went round by 
Regent Street, whereby they got glued 
at Peter Robinson’s window and nine 
other windows; and it was nearly five 
o’clock when they reached Morley’s. As 
they came near the door of their sitting- 
room Mrs. Staines heard somebody laugh- 
ing and talking to her husband. The 
laugh, to her subtle ears, did not sound 
musical and genial, but keen, satirical, 
unpleasant: so it was with some timid- 
ity she opened the door; and there sat 
the old chap with the twinkling eyes. 
Both parties stared at each other a 
moment. 

“Why, it is them !”’ cried the old gen- 
tleman ; “‘ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!’’ 

Rosa colored all over, and felt guilty 
somehow, and looked miserable. 

‘‘ Rosa, dear,’’ said Dr. Staines, “‘ this 
is our Uncle Philip.” 

‘Oh!’ said Rosa, and turned red and 
pale by turns: for she had a great desire 
to propitiate Uncle Philip. 

‘You were in the auction-room, sir,”’ 
said Mrs. Cole severely. 

‘“‘Twas, madam. He! he!” 

‘* Furnishing a house ? ”’ 

“No, ma’am. I go toa dozen sales a 
week; but it is not to buy: I enjoy the 


248 WORKS 
humors. Did you ever hear of Robert 
Burton, ma’am ? ”’ 

“No. Yes, a great traveler, isn’t he? 
Discovered the Nile—or the Niger—or 
something.’’ 

This majestic vagueness staggered old 
Crusty at first; but he recovered his 
equilibrium, and said, ‘‘ Why, yes, now I 
think of it, you are right ; he has traveled 
further than most of us; for about two 
centuries ago he visited that bourn whence 
no traveler returns. Well, when he was 
alive—he was a student of Christ Church 
—he used to go down to a certain bridge 
over the Isis and enjoy the chaff of the 
bargemen. Now there are no bargemen 
left to speak of: the mantle of Bobby 
Burton’s bargees has fallen on the Jews 
and demi-semi-Christians, that buy and 
sell furniture at the weekly auctions: 
thither I repair, to hear what little coarse 
wit is left us: used to go to the House of 
Commons, but they are getting too civil 
by half for my money. SBesides, charac- 
ters come outinan auction. For instance, 
only this very day I saw two ladies enter, 
in gorgeous attire, like heifers decked for 
sacrifice, and reduce their spoliation to a 
certainty by employing a broker to bid. 
Now, what is a broker? A fellow who is 
to be paid a shilling in the pound for all 
articles purchased. What is his interest 
then? To buy cheap? Clearly not. He 
is paid in proportion to the dearness of 
the article.’’ 

Rosa’s face began to work piteously. 

‘* Accordingly, what did the broker in 
question do? He winked to another 
broker, and these two bid against one 
another, over their victim’s head, and 
ran everything she wanted up at least a 
hundred per cent above the value. So 
open and transparent a swindle I have 
seldom seen, even in an auction-room. 
Hadvhadhadahaliha ! 7? 

His mirth was interrupted by Rosa go- 
ing to her husband, hiding her head on 
his shoulder, and meekly crying. 

Christopher comforted her like a man. 
‘* Don’t you cry, darling,’’ said he. ‘‘ How 
should a pure creature like you know the 
badness of the world all in a moment ? 
If it is my wife you are laughing at, 


Let it to a man; 


OF CHARLES READE. 


Uncle Philip, let me tell you this is the 
wrong place. I’d rather, a thousand 
times, have her as she is, than armed 
with the cunning and suspicions of a 
hardened old worldling like you.”’ 

‘* With all my heart,’’ said Uncle Philip, 
who, to do him justice, could take blows 
as well as give them; *‘ but why employ 
a broker? Why pay a scoundrel five per 
cent to make you pay a hundred per 
cent? why pay a noisy fool a farthing to 
open his mouth for you when you have 
taken the trouble to be there yourself, 
and have got a mouth of your own to bid 
discreetly with ? Was ever such an ab- 
surdity ?’”’ He began to get angry. 

‘*Do you want to quarrel with me, 
Uncle Philip?’ said Christopher firing 
up; ‘* because sneering at my Rosa is the 
way, and the only way, and the sure 
way.”’ 

‘“‘Oh, no!’ said Rosa _ interposing. 
“Uncle Philip was right. I am very 
foolish and inexperienced; but I am not 
so vain as to turn from good advice. I 
will never employ a broker again, sir.” 

Uncle Philip smiled, and looked plgased. 

Mrs. Cole caused a diversion by taking 
leave, and Rosa followed her downstairs. 
On her return she found Christopher tell- 
ing his uncle all about the Bijou, and how 
he had taken it for £130 a year and £100 
premium, and Uncle Philip staring fear- 
fully. 

At last he found his tongue. ‘ The 
Bijou!’ said he. ‘‘ Why, that is a name 
they gave to a little den in Dear Street, 
Mayfair. You haven’t been and taken 
that ! Built over a mews.”’ 

Christopher groaned. ‘ That 
place, I fear.’’ 

“Why, the owner is a friend of mine; 
an old patient. Stables stunk him out. 
I forget his name. 
Stables stunk ham out. He said, ‘I shall 
go.’ ‘You can’t,’ said my friend; ‘you 
have taken a lease.’ ‘Lease be d——4d,’ 
said the other ; ‘I never took your house ; 
here’s quite a large stench not specified 
in your description of the property: it 
can’t be the same place :’ flung the lease 
at his head, and cut like the wind to for: 
eign parts less odoriferous. J’d have got 


is the 


A SIMPLETON. 


you the hole for ninety ; but you are lke 
your wife, you must go to an agent. 
What! don’t you know that an agent is 
a man acting for you with an interest 
opposed to yours? Employing an agent. 
It is like a Trojan seeking the aid of a 
Greek. You needn’t cry, Mrs. Staines ; 
your husband has been let in deeper than 
you have. Now you are young people 
beginning life: I’ll give you a piece of 
advice. Kmploy others to do what you 
can’t do, and it must be done; but never 
to do anything you can do better for your- 
selves. Agent! the word is derived from 
a Latin word, ‘agere,’ to do: and agents 
act up to their etymology; for they in- 
variably do the nincompoop that employs 
them, or deals with them in any mortal 
way. I’d have got you that beastly lit- 
tle Bijou for £90 a year.’’ 

Uncle Philip went away crusty, leaving 
the young couple finely mortified and dis- 
couraged. 

This did not last very long. Chris- 
topher noted the experience and Uncle 
Phil’s wisdom in his diary, and then took 
his wife on his knee, and comforted her, 
and said, ‘‘Never mind; experience is 
worth money, and it always has to be 
bought. Those who cheat us will die 
poorer than we shall, if we are honest 
and economical. I have observed that 
people are seldom ruined by the vices of 
others; these may hurt them, of course; 
but it is only their own faults and follies 
that can destroy them.’’ 

“Ah, Christie!’’ said Rosa, ‘“‘ you are 
aman. Oh, the comfort of being mar- 
ried to a man! A man sees the best 
side. Ladore men. Dearest, I will waste 
no more of your money. I will go to no 
more Ssales.”’ 

Christopher saw she was deeply morti- 
fied; and he said quietly, ‘‘On the con- 
trary, you will go to the very next. Only 
take Uncle Philip’s advice; employ no 
broker, and watch the prices things fetch 
when you are not bidding, and keep cool.”’ 

She caressed his ears with both her 
white hands, and thanked him for giving 
her another trial. So that trouble melted 
in the sunshine of conjugal love. 

Notwithstanding the agent’s solemn 


249 


assurance, the Bijou was out of repair. 
Doctor Staines detected internal odors, 
as well as those that flowed in from the 
mews. He was not the man to let his 
wife perish by miasma; so he had the 
drains all up and actually found brick 
drains and a cesspool; he stopped that 
up, and laid down new pipe-drains, with 
a good fall, and properly trapped. The 
old drains were hidden, after the manner 
of builders. He had the whole course of 
his new drains marked upon all the floors 
they passed under and had several stones 
and boards hinged, to facilitate examina- 
tion at any period. 

But all this, with the necessary clean- 
ing, whitewashing, painting, and paper- 
ing, ran away with money. Then came 
Rosa’s purchases, which, to her amaze- 
ment, amounted to £190, and not a car- 
pet, curtain or bed among the lot. Then 
there was the carriage home from the 
auction-room, an expense one avoids by 
buying at a shop, and the broker claimed 
his shilling in the pound. This, however, 
Staines refused. The man came and 
blustered. Rosa, who was there, trem- 
bled. Then, for the first time, she saw 
her husband’s brow lower; he seemed 
transfigured, and looked terrible. ‘‘ You 
scoundrel,’* said he, ‘‘ you set another vil- 
lain like yourself to bid against you, and 
you betrayed the innocent lady that em- 
ployed you. Icould indict you and your 
confederate for a conspiracy. I take the 
goods out of respect of my wife’s credit, 
but you shall gain nothing by swindling 
her. Be off, you heartless miscreant, or 
Vu—”’ 

‘‘T’ll take the law if you do.”’ 

“Take it, then: I’ll give you something 
to howl for;’’ and he seized him with a 
grasp so tremendous that the fellow cried 
out in dismay, ‘‘Oh! don’t hit me, sir; 
pray don’t.’’ 

On this abject appeal, Staines tore the 
door open with his left hand, and spun 
the broker out into the passage with his 
right. Two movements of the angry 
Hercules, and the man was literally 
whirled out of sight with a rapidity and 
swiftness almost ludicrous ; it was like a 
trick in a pantomime: a clatter on the 


250 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


stairs betrayed that he had gone down 
the first steps in a wholesale and irregu- 
lar manner, though he had just managed 
to keep his feet. 

As for Staines, he stood there still low- 
ering like thunder, and his eyes like hot 
coals; but his wife threw her arms around 
him, and begged him consolingly not to 
mind. 

She was trembling like an aspen. 

“Dear me,’’ said Christopher, with a 
ludicrous change to marked politeness 
and respect: ‘‘I forgot you in my right- 
eous indignation.’? Next he becomes ux- 
urious. ‘* Did they frighten her, a duck? 
Sit on my knee, darling, and pull my hair 
for not being more considerate—there— 
there.’’ 

This was followed by the whole absurd 
soothing process as practiced by manly 
husbands upon quivering and somewhat 
hysterical wives; and ended with a formal 
apology. ‘*‘ You must not think that I 
am passionate; on the contrary, | am 
always practicing self-government. My 
maxim is, dnemum rege qui nist paret 
imperat; and that means, Make your 
temper your servant, or else it will be 
your master. But to ill-use my dear lit- 
tle wife, it is unnatural, it is monstrous, it 
makes my blood boil.”’ 

‘Oh, dear! don’t go into another. It 
is all over. I can’t bear to see you in a 
passion; you are so terrible, so beautiful. 
Ah! they are fine things, courage and 
strength. There is nothing I admire so 
much.’’ 

‘“Why, they are aS common as dirt. 
What I admire is modesty, timidity, 
sweetness ; the sensitive cheek that pales 
or blushes at a word, the bosom that 
quivers, and clings to a fellow whenever 
anything goes wrong.”’ | 

‘Oh, that is what you admire, is it? ”’ 
said Rosa, dryly. 

‘¢ Admire it?’’ said Christopher, not 
seeing the trap; ‘‘ I adore it.”’ 

«Then, Christie dear, you are a simple- 
ton : that is all. And we are made for one 
another.”’ 


The house was to be furnished and occu- 
pied as soon as possible; so Mrs. Staines 


and Mrs. Cole went to another sale-room. 
Mrs. Staines remembered all Uncle Philip 
had said, and went plainly dressed ; but 
her friend declined to sacrifice her showy 
dress to her friend’s interests. Rosa 
thought that a little unkind, but said 
nothing. 


In this auction-room they easily gota _ 


place at the table; but they did not find 
it heaven ; for a number of second-hand 
carpets were in the sale, and these, brim- 
ful of dust, were all shown on the table, 
and the dirt choked and poisoned our fair 
friends. Brokers pestered them, until at 
last, Rosa, smarting under her late ex- 
posure, addressed the auctioneer quietly, 
in her silvery tones: ‘‘Sir, these gentle- 
men are annoying me by forcing their 
services on me. I do not intend to buy 
at all unless I can be allowed to bid for 
myself.”’ 

When Rosa, blushing and amazed at 
her own boldness, uttered these words, 
she little foresaw their effect. She had 
touched a popular sore. 

“You are right, madam,’ said a re- 
spectable tradesman opposite her. ‘‘What 
right have these dirty fellows, without a 
shilling in their pocket, to go and force 
themselves on a lady against her will? ”’ 

‘“It has been complained of in the pa- 
pers again and again,’’ said another. 

‘““What, mayn’t we live as well as 
you?’’ retorted a broker. 

“Yes, but not to force yourself on a 
lady. Why, she’d give you in charge of 
the police if you tried it on outside.”’ 

Then there was a downright clamor of 
discussion and chaff. 

Presently up rises very slowly a coun- 
tryman, so colossal that it seemed asif he 
never would have done getting up, and 
gives his experiences. He informed the 
company, in a broad Yorkshire dialect, 
that he did a bit in furniture, and at first 
starting these brokers buzzed about him 
like flies and pestered him. ‘‘ Ah damned 
’em pretty hard,’’ said he, “‘ but they 
didn’t heed any. So then ah spoke ’em 
civil, and ah said, ‘ Well, lads, ah dinna 
come fra Yorkshire to sit like a dummy 
and let you buy wi’ my brass: the first 
that pesters me again ah’ll just fell him 


| 


SIMPLETON. 


on t’ plaace, like a caulf, and ah’m not 
very sure he’ll get up again in a hurry.’ 
So they dropped me like a hot potato ; 
never pestered me again. But if they 
won’t give over pestering you, mistress, 
ah’ll come round, and just stand behind 
your chair, and bring neive with me,”’ 
showing a fist like a leg of mutton. 

‘“*No, no,’’ said the auctioneer, “ that 
will not do. I will have no disturbance 
here. Call the policeman.”’ 

While the clerk went to the door for 
the bobby, a gentleman reminded the 
auctioneer that the journals had repeat- 
edly drawn attention to the nuisance. 

‘“‘Fault of the public, not mine, sir. 
Policeman, stand behind that lady’s chair, 
and, if anybody annoys her, put him 
quietly into the street.”’ 

‘This auction room will be to let soon,”’ 
said a voice at the end of the table. 

“This auction room,’’ said the auc- 
tioneer, master of the gay or grave at a 
moment’s notice, ‘is supported by the 
public and the trade; it is not supported 
by paupers.”’ 

A Jew upholsterer put in his word. ‘I 
do my own business; but I like to let a 
poor man live.”’ 

‘* Jonathan,’’ said the auctioneer to one 
of his servants, “‘ after this sale you may 
put up the shutters; we have gone and 
offended Mr. Jacobs. He keeps a shop in 
Blind Alley, Whitechapel. Now then, 
Lot 69.” 

Rosa bid timidly for one or two lots, 
and bought them cheap. 

The auctioneer kept looking her way, 
and she had only to nod. 

The obnoxious broker got opposite her, 
and ran her up a little out of spite; but 
as he had only got half a crown about him, 
and no means of doubling it, he dared not 
go far. 

On the other side of the table was a 
figure to which Rosa’s eyes often turned 
with interest: a fair young boy about 
twelve years old ; he had golden hair, and 
was in deep mourning. His appearance 
interested Rosa, and she wondered how 
he came there, and why: he looked like a 
lamb wedged in among wolves, a flower 
among weeds. As the lots proceeded, the 


251 


boy seemed to get uneasy; and at last, 
when Lot 73 was put up, anybody could 
see in his poor little face that he was there 
to bid for it. 

**Lot 73, an armchair covered in mo- 
rocco. An excellent and most useful 
article. Should not be at all surprised if 
it was made by Gillow.’’ 

‘¢Gillow wood, though, 
who owed him a turn. 

Chorus of dealers.—‘‘ Haw! haw!’ 

The auctioneer.—‘ I like to hear some 
people run a lot down; shows they are 
going to bid for it in earnest. Well, name 
your own price. Five pounds to begin ?”’ 

Now, if nobody had spoken, the auction- 
eer would have gone on, ‘‘ Well, four 
pounds then, three, two, whatever you 
like,’? and at last obtained a bona fide 
offer of thirty shillings; but the moment 
he said, ‘‘ Five pounds to begin,’’ the boy 
in black lifted up his childish treble, and 


9? 


said Jacobs, 


bid thus, “‘ Five pound ten ’’—‘ six 
pounds *’’—‘‘ six pound ten ’’— ‘‘ seven 
pounds ’’—‘‘ seven pound ten ’’—“ eight 
pounds’ — “eight pound ten ’’—“ nine 
pounds *”? — ‘nine pound ten ’’ — “ ten 
pounds!’’ without interruption, and in- 


deed, almost in a breath. 

There was a momentary pause of 
amazement, and then an outburst of 
chaff. 

‘Nice little boy ! ”’ 

‘*Didn’t he say his lesson well ? ”’ 

‘‘ Favor us with your card, sir. 
are a gent as knows how to buy.”’ 

“What did he stop for? If it’s worth 
ten, it is worth a hundred.”’ 

‘‘ Bless the child,’’ said a female dealer 
kindly, ‘“‘ what made you go on like that ? 
Why, there was no bid against you! 
you'd have got it for two pounds—a rick- 
ety old thing.”’ 

Young master began to whimper. 
“«“ Why, the gentleman said, ‘ Five pounds 
to begin.’ It was the chair poor grand- 
papa always sat in, and all the things are 
sold, and mamma said it would break her 
heart to lose it. She was to ill to come, 
so she sent me. She told me I was not to 
let it be sold away from us for less than 
ten pounds, or she sh—should be m—m— 
miserable,’’ and the poor little fellow be- 


You 


2d2 


gan tocry. Rosa followed suit promptly 
but unobtrusively. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


** No greenhorns left now.’’ 
‘‘That lady won’t give a ten-pound note 


‘‘Sentiment always costs money,’’ said | for her grandfather’s armchair.”’ 


Mr. Jacobs gravely. 

‘* How do you know ?”’ asked Mr. Cohen. 
‘“‘Have you got any on hand? I never 
seen none at your shop.”’ 

Some tempting things now came up, 
and Mrs. Staines bid freely ; but all of a 
sudden she looked down the table, and 
there was Uncle Philip twinkling as be- 
fore. ‘‘Oh, dear! what am I doing now ?”’ 
thought she. ‘‘I have got no broker.”’ 

She bid on, but in fear and trembling 
because of those twinkling eyes. At last 
she mustered courage, wrote on a leaf of 
her pocket-book, and passed it down to 
him. ‘It would be only kind to warn 
me. What am I doing wrong? ”’ 

He sent her back a line directly : ‘‘ Auc- 
tioneer running you up himself. Follow 
his eye when he bids; you will see there 
is no bona fide bidder at your prices.”’ 

Rosa did so, and found that it was 
true. 

She nodded to Uncle Philip; and, with 
her expressive face, asked him what she 
should do. 

The old boy must have his joke. So he 
wrote back, ‘‘ Tell him, as you see he has 
a fancy for certain articles, you would not 
be so discourteous as to bid against him.’’ 

The next article but one was a draw- 
ing-room suit Rosa wanted ; but the auc- 
tioneer bid against her; so, at eighteen 
pounds she stopped. 

“It is against you, madam,’’ said the 
auctioneer. 

«Yes, sir,’’ said Rosa; ‘‘but as you 
are the only bidder, and you have been so 
kind to me, I would not think of opposing 
VOUS 

The words were scarcely out of her 
mouth when they were greeted with a 
roar of Homeric laughter that literally 
shook the room, and this time not at the 
expense of the innocent speaker. 

*‘That’s into your mutton, governor.”’ 

‘‘Sharp’s the word this time.’’ 

“| say, governor, don’t you want a 
broker to bid for ye?”’ 

‘*Wink at me next time, sir; I’ll do 
the office for you.’’ 


b 


“Oh, yes, she will, if it’s stuffed with 
bank-notes ! ”’ 

‘* Put the next lot up with the owner’s 
name and the reserve price. Open busi- 
ness.”’ 

‘‘ And sing a psalm at starting.”’ 

‘‘A little less noise in Judexa, if you 
please,’’ said the auctioneer, who had 
now recovered from the blow. <“‘ Lot 97.’’ 

This was a very pretty marqueterie 
cabinet ; it stood against the wall, and 
Rosa had set her heart upon it. Nobody 
would bid. She had muzzled the auc- 
tioneer etfectually. 

«Your own price.”’ 

‘*Two pounds,’ said Rosa. 

A dealer offered guineas, and it ad- 
vanced slowly to four pounds and half a 
crown, at which it was about to be 
knocked down to Rosa, when suddenly a 
new bidder arose in the broker Rosa had 
rejected. They bid slowly and sturdily 
against each other, until a line was given 
to Rosa from Uncle Philip. 

“This time it is your own friend, the 
Snipe-nosed woman. She telegraphed a 
broker.”’ 

Rosa read, and crushed the note. 
guineas,’’ said she. 

‘« Six-ten.”’ 

«« Seven.”’ 

* Seven-ten.”’ 

“ Hight.”’ 

“ Kight-ten.”’ 

‘‘'Ten guineas,’’ said Rosa; and then, 
with feminine cunning, stealing a sudden 
glance, caught her friend leaning back 
and signaling the broker not to give in. 

‘Kleven pounds.’’ 

‘<< Twelve.”’ 

‘PMirreena, 

«« Fourteen.”’ 

‘* Sixteen.’’ 

‘* Kighteen.”’ 

“* Twenty.”’ 

‘*Twenty guineas.”’ 

“It is yours, my faithful friend,’’ said 
Rosa, turning suddenly round on Mrs. 
Cole with a magnificent glance no one 
would have thought her capable of. 


Tao 1b.< 


9 


A SIMPLETON. 


Then she rose, and stalked away. 

Dumfounded for the moment, Mrs. 
Cole followed her, and stopped her at the 
door. 

‘““Why, Rosie dear, it is the only thing 
I have bid for. There I’ve sat by your 
side like a mouse.’’ 

Rosa turned gravely toward her. ‘ You 
know it is not that. You had only to tell 
me you wanted it. I would never have 
been so mean as to bid against you.”’ 

‘*Mean, indeed!’ said Florence, toss- 
ing her head. 

«Yes, mean; to draw back and hide 
behind the friend you were with, and em- 
ploy the very rogue she had turned off. 
But it is my own fault. Cecilia warned 
me against you. She always said you 
were a treacherous girl.’’ 

‘And I say you are an impudent little 
minx. Only just married, and going 
about like two vagabonds, and talk to me 
like that !”’ 

‘““We are not going about like two 
vagabonds. We have taken a house in 
Mayfair.’’ 

“‘Say a stable.”’ 

“It was by your advice, you false- 
hearted creature.”’ 

‘You are a fool.”’ 

‘«‘ You are worse: you are a traitress.”’ 

‘«*Then don’t you have anything to do 
with me.”’ 

‘‘Heaven forbid Ishould. You treacher- 
ous thing.’’ 

«You insolent—insolent—I hate you.”’ 

*« And I despise you.”’ 

**T always hated you at bottom.”’ 

‘‘That’s why you pretended to love me, 
you wretch.’’ 

‘Well, I pretend no more. 
enemy for life.’’ 

“Thank you. You have told the truth 
for once in your life.’’ 

““T have. And he shall never call in 
your husband; so you may leave May- 
fair as soon as you like.’’ 

‘Not to please you, madam. We can 
get on without traitors.”’ 

And so they parted, with eyes that 
gleamed like tigers. 

Rosa drove home in great agitation, 
and tried to tell Christopher, but choked, 


I am your 


253 


and became hysterical. The husband 
physician coaxed and scolded her out of 
that; and presently in came Uncle Philip, 
full of the humors of the auction-room. 
He told about the little boy with a de- 
light that disgusted Mrs. Staines; and 
then was particularly merry on female 
friendships. ‘‘ Fancy a man going to the 
sale with his friend, and bidding against 
him on the sly.”’ 

‘She is no friend of mine. 
enemies for life.”’ 

‘* And you were to be friends till death,”’ 
said Staines with a sigh. 

Philip inquired who she was. 

‘*Mrs. John Cole.”’ 

‘Not of Curzon Street ? ”’ 

‘TV esa 

‘«* And you have quarreled with her? ”’ 

‘Vestn 

“Well, but her husband is a general 
practitioner.”’ 

‘‘She is a traitress.”’ 

“But her husband could put a good 
deal of money in Christopher’s way.”’ 

“‘T can’t helpit. She is a traitress.’’ 

“And you have quarreled with her 
about an old wardrobe.’’ 

“No, for her disloyalty, and her base 
good-for-nothingness. Oh! oh! oh!”’ 

Uncle Philip got up, looking sour. 
‘‘Good - afternoon, Mrs. Christopher,”’ 
said he very dryly. 

Christopher accompanied him to the 
foot of the stairs. 

‘Well, Christopher,’’ said he, ‘‘ matri- 
mony is a blunder at the best; and you 
have not done the thing by halves. You 
have married a simpleton. She will be 
your ruin.”’ 

‘* Uncle Philip, since you only come here 
to insult us, I hope in future you will stay 
at home.”’ 

‘Oh ! with pleasure, sir. 


We are 


Good-by.”’ 


CHAPTER VII. 


CHRISTOPHER STAINES came back look- 
ing pained and disturbed. ‘‘ There,’’ said 


254 


he, ‘‘I feared it would come to this. I 
have quarreled with Uncle Philip.”’ 

“Oh! how could you? ”’ 

‘* He atfronted me.”’ 

“What about ?”’ 

‘““Never you mind. Don’t let us say 
anything more about it, darling. Itisa 
pity, a sad pity—he was a good friend of 
mine once.”’ 

He paused, entered what had passed in 
his diary, and then sat down with a gen- 
tle expression of sadness on his manly 
features. Rosa hung about him, soft and 
pitying, till it cleared away, at all events 
for the time. 

Next day they went together to clear 
the goods Rosa had purchased. While 
the list was being made out in the office, 
in came the fair-haired boy with a ten- 
pound note in his very hand. Rosa caught 
sight of it, and turned to the auctioneer 
with a sweet, pitying face: “Oh! sir, 
surely you will not take all that money 
from him, poor child, for a rickety old 
chair.’’ 

The auctioneer stared with amazement 
at her simplicity, and said, “‘ What would 
the venders say to me? ”’ 

She looked distressed, and said, ‘‘ Well, 
then, really we ought to raise a subscrip- 
tion, poor thing ! ”’ 

‘““Why, ma’am,’’ said the auctioneer, 
‘“‘he isn’t hurt: the article belonged to 
his mother and her sister ; the brother-in- 
law isn’t on good terms ; so he demanded 
a public sale. She will get back four pun 
ten out of it.” Here the clerk put in his 
word. ‘* And there’s five pounds paid, I 
forgot to tell you.”’ 

“Qh ! left a deposit, did he? ”’ 

“No, sir. But the Laughing Hyena 
gave you five pounds at the end of the 
sale.’’ 

“The Laughing Hyena, Mr. Jones ?”’ 

‘‘Oh! beg pardon: that is what we 
call him in the room. He has got sucha 
curious laugh.”’ 

‘“‘Oh! I know the gent. He is a re- 
tired doctor. J wish he’d laugh less and 
buy more; and he gave you five pounds 
toward the young gentleman’s armchair ! 
Well, I should as soon have expected 
blood from a flint. You have got five 


bd 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


pounds to pay, sir: so now the chair will 
cost your mamma ten shillings. Give 
him the order and the change, Mr. 
Jones.”’ 

Christopher and Rosa talked this over 
in the room while the men were looking 
out their purchases. ‘‘ Come,’’ said Rosa ; 
‘‘now I forgive him sneering at me; his 
heart is not really hard, you_ see.” 

Staines, on the contrary, was very an- 
gry. “ What!” he cried, “ pity a boy who 
made one bad bargain, that, after all, 
was not a very bad bargain: and he had 
no kindness, nor even common humanity, 
for my beautiful Rosa, inexperienced as a 
child, and buying for her husband, like 
a good, affectionate, honest creature, 
among a lot of sharpers and hard-hearted 
cynics—like myself.’’ 

‘“‘It was cruel of him,’’ said Rosa, al- 
tering her mind in a moment, and half 
inclined to cry. 

This made Christopher furious. ‘‘ The 
ill-natured, crotchety, old— The fact is, 
he is a misogynist.”’ 

‘*Oh, the wretch !’’ said Rosa warmly. 
‘¢ And what is that ? ”’ 

‘¢ A woman-hater.”’ 

“Oh! is that all? Why, so do I— 
after that Florence Cole. Women are 
mean, heartless things. Give me men! 
they are loyal and true.’’ 

«‘ All of them ?’’ inquired, Christopher 
a little satirically. ‘‘ Read the papers.”’ 

‘‘Kvery soul of them,’’ said Mrs. Staines, 
passing loftily .over the proposed test. 
‘That is, all the ones J care about; and 
that is my own, own one.’’ 

Disagreeable creatures to have about 
one—these simpletons ! 

Mrs. Staines took Christopher to shops 
to buy the remaining requisites: and in 
three days more the house was furnished, 
two female servants engaged, and the 
couple took their luggage over to the 
Bijou. 

Rosa was excited and happy at the 
novelty of possession and authority, and 
that close sense of house proprietorship 
which belongs to woman. By dinner- 
time she could have told you how many 
shelves there were in every cupboard, and 
knew the Bijou by heart in a way that 


\ 


A SIMPLETON. 255 


Christopher never knew it. All this 
ended, as running about and excitement 
generally does, with my lady being ex- 
hausted, and lax with fatigue. So then 
he made her lie down on a little couch, 
while he went through his accounts. 

When he had examined all the bills 
carefully, he looked very grave, and said, 
“Who would believe this? We began 
with £3000. It was to last us several 
years—till I got a good practice. Rosa, 
there is only £1440 left.” 


‘“Oh, impossible!’ said Rosa. ‘Oh 
dear! why did I ever enter a sale- 
room ? ’’ 


‘“No, no, my darling; you were bitten 
once or twice, but you made some good 
bargains too. Remember there was £400 
set apart for my life policy.’’ 

‘“What a waste of money !”’ 

‘* Your father did not think so. Then 
the lease; the premium; repairs of the 
drains that would have poisoned my 
Rosa; turning the coach-house into a 
dispensary ; painting, papering and fur- 
nishing ; china and linen and everything 


to buy. We must look at this seriously. 
Only £1440 left. A slow profession. No 
friends. JI have quarreled with Uncle 


Philip: you with Mrs. Cole; and her 
husband would have launched me.’’ 

‘And it was to please her we settled 
here. Oh, I could kill her: nasty cat!” 

““Never mind; it is not a case for de- 
spondency, but it is for prudence. All we 
have to do is to look the thing in the face, 
and be very economical in everything. I 
had better give you an allowance for 
housekeeping ; and I earnestly beg you 
to buy things yourself while you are a 
poor man’s wife, and pay ready money 
for everything. My mother was a great 
manager, and she always said, ‘ There is 
but one way; be your own market-wo- 
man, and pay on the spot; never let the 
tradesman get you on their books, or 
what with false weight, double charges, 
and the things your servants order that 
never enter the house, you lose more than 
a hundred a year by cheating.’ ”’ 

Rosa yielded a languid assent to this 
part of his discourse, and it hardly 
seemed to enter her mind; but she raised 


no objection, and in due course he made 
her a special allowance for housekeeping. 

It soon transpired that medical advice 
was to be had gratis at the Bijou from 
eight till ten, and there was generally a 
good attendance. But a week passed, 
and not one patient came of the class this 
couple must live by. Christopher set 
this down to what people call the ‘“‘ Tran- 
sition period’’: his Kent patients had 
lost him; his London patients not found 
him. He wrote to all his patients in the 
country, and many of his pupils at the 
university, to let them know where he 
was settled, and then he waited. . 

Not a creature came. 

Rosa bore this very well for a time, so 
long as the house was a novelty; but, 
when that excitement was worn out, she 
began to be very dull, and used to come 
and entice him out to walk with her: he 
would look wistfully at her, but object 
that if he left the house he should be sure 
to lose a patient. 

‘‘Oh, they won’t come any more for 
our staying in—tiresome things!”’ said 
Rosa. 

But Christopher would kiss her, and re- 
main firm. ‘‘ My love,’”’ said he, ‘‘ you 
do not realize how hard a fight there is 
before us. How should you? You are 
very young. No, for your sake I must 
not throw a chance away. Write to your 
female friends: that will while away an 
hour or two.”’ 

‘‘ What, after that Florence Cole? ”’ 

“Write to those who have not made 
such violent professions.”’ 

“So I will, dear. Especially to those 
that are married and come to London. 
Oh, and I’ll write to that cold-blooded 
thing, Lady Cicely Treherne! Why do 
you shake your head ? ”’ 

‘‘Did 1? Iwasnot aware. Well, dear, 
if ladies of rank were to come here, I fear 
they might make you discontented with 
your lot.”’ 

«¢ All the women on earth could not do 
that. However, the chances are she will 
not come near me; she left the school 
quite a big girl, an immense girl, when I 
was only twelve. She used to smile at 
my capriccios, and once she kissed me— 


256 WORKS 


She was an awful Sawney, 
I think I will 


actually. 
though, and so affected. 
write to her.”’ 

These letters brought just one lady, a 
Mrs. Turner, who talked to Rosa very 
glibly about herself, and amused Rosa 
twice: at the third visit Rosa tried to 
change the conversation. Mrs. Turner 
instantly got up and went away. She 
could not bear the sound of the human 
voice, unless it was talking about her and 
her affairs. 

And now Staines began to feel down- 
right uneasy. Income was steadily going 
out: not a shilling coming in. The lame, 
the blind, and the sick frequented his dis- 
pensary, and got his skill out of him 
gratis, and sometimes a little physic, a 
little wine, and other things that cost 
him money: but of the patients that pay, 
not one came to his front door. 

He walked round and round his little 
yard, like a hyena in its cage, waiting, 
waiting, waiting: and oh! how he envied 
the lot of those who can hunt for work, 
instead of having to stay at home and 
wait for others to come, whose will they 
cannot influence. His heart began to 
sicken with hope deferred and dim fore- 
bodings of the future; and he saw, with 
grief, that his wife was getting duller 
and duller, and that her days dragged 
more heavily far than his own; for he 
could study. 

At last his knocker began to show signs 
of life: his visitors were physicians. His 
lectures on ‘‘ Diagnosis ’’ were well known 
to them; and one after another found him 
out. They were polite, kind, even friendly; 
but here it ended: these gentlemen, of 
course, did not resign their patients to 
him; and the inferior class of practi- 
tioners avoided his door like a _ pesti- 
lence. 

Mrs. Staines, who had always lived for 
amusement, could strike out no fixed oc- 
cupation ; her time hung like lead; the 
house was small; and in small houses the 
faults of servants ran against the mis- 
tress, and she can’t help seeing them, and 
all the worse for her. Itis easier to keep 
things clean in the country, and Rosa had 
a high standard, which her two servants 


OF CHARLES 


e—-_—or—— OO OS ————-P sn eee ooo TT 


READE. 


could never quite attain. This annoyed 
her, and she began to scold a little. They 
answered civilly, but, in other respects, 
remained imperfect beings: they laid out 
every Shilling they earned in finery ; and 
this, Iam ashamed to say, irritated Mrs. 
Staines, who was wearing out her wed- 
ding garments, and had no excuse for 
buying, and Staines had begged her to 
be economical. The more they dressed, 
the more she scolded; they began to an- 
swer. She gave the cook warning; the 
other, though not on good terms with the 
cook, had a gush of esprit du corps di- 
rectly, and gave Mrs. Staines warning. 

Mrs. Staines told her husband all this : 
he took her part, though without openly 
interfering ; and they had two new sery- 
ants, not as good as the last. 

This worried Rosa sadly; but it was a 
flea-bite to the deeper nature and more 
forecasting mind of her husband, still 
doomed to pace that miserable yard, like 
a hyena, chafing, seeking, longing for the 
patient that never came. 

Rosa used to look out of his dressing- 
room window, and see him pace the yard. 
At first tears of pity stood in her eyes. 
By and by she got angry with the world ; 
and at last, strange to say, a little irri- 
tated with him. It is hard for a weak 
woman to keep up all her respect for the 
man that fails. 

One day, after watching him a long 
time unseen, she got excited, put on her 
shawl and bonnet, and ran down to him. 
She took him by the arm: “If you love 
me, come out of this prison, and walk 
with me; we are too miserable. I shall 
be your first patient if this goes on much 
longer.’’ He looked at her, saw she was 
very excited, and had better be humored ; 
so he kissed her, and just said, with a mel- 
ancholy smile, ‘‘ How poor are they that 
have not patience! ’’ Then he put on his 
hat, and walked in the Park and Ken- 
sington Gardens with her. The season 
was just beginning. There were carriages 
enough, and gay Amazons enough, to 
make poor Rosa sigh more than once. 

Christopher heard the sigh, and pressed 
her arm, and said, ‘‘ Courage, love: I hope 
to see you among them yet.”’ 


A SIMPLETON. 


‘“The sooner the better,’’ 
little hardly. 

«And, meantime, which of them all is 
as beautiful as you?” 

<All I know is, they are more at- 
tractive. Who looks at me? walking 
tamely by.” 

Christepher said nothing: but these 
words seemed to imply a thirst for admi- 
ration, and made him a little uneasy. 

By and by the walk put the swift- 
changing Rosa in spirits, and she began 
to chat gayly, and hung prattling and 
beaming on her husband’s arm, when 
they entered Curzon Street. Here, how- 
ever, occurred an incident, trifling in it- 
self, but unpleasant. Dr. Staines saw 
one of his best Kentish patients get 
feebly out of his carriage, and call on 
Dr. Bar. He started, and stopped. Rosa 
asked what was the matter. He told 
her. She said, ‘‘ We are unfortunate.”’ 

Staines said nothing; he only quickened 
his pace, but he was greatly disturbed. 
She expected him to complain that she 
had dragged him out, and lost him that 
first chance. Buthesaid nothing. When 
they got home he asked the servant had 
anybody called. 

jo NOmSibstc 

‘““Surely you are mistaken, Jane. A 
gentleman in a carriage ! ”’ 

‘““Not a creature have been since you 
went out, sir.’’ 

“Well, then, dearest,’’ said he sweetly, 
‘““we have nothing to reproach ourselves 
with.’? Then he knit his brow gloomily. 
“It is worse than I thought. It seems 
even one’s country patients go to an- 
other doctor when they visit London. It 
is hard.’’ 

Rosa leaned her head on his shoulder, 
and curled round him, as one she would 
shield against the world’s injustice; but 
she said nothing ; she was a little fright- 
ened at his eye that lowered, and his 
noble frame that trembled a little, with 
ire suppressed. 

Two days after this a brougham drove 
up to the door, and a tallish, fattish, 
pasty-faced man got out, and inquired for 
Dr. Staines. 
~ He was shown into the dining-room, 


said she, a 


257 


and told Jane he had come to consult the 
doctor. 

Rosa had peeped over the stairs, all 
curiosity; she glided noiselessly down, 
and with love’s swift foot got into the 
yard before Jane. ‘‘He is come! he is 
come! Kiss me.’’ 

Dr. Staines kissed her first, and then 
asked who was come. 

* Oh, nobody of any consequence! Only 
the first patient. Kiss me again.”’ 

Dr. Staines kissed her again, and then 
was for going to the first patient. 

“No,” said she; ‘‘not yet. I met a 
doctor’s wife at Dr. Mayne’s, and she told 
me things. You must always keep them 
waiting, or else they think nothing of you. 
Such a funny woman!. ‘Treat ’em like 
dogs, my dear,’ she said. ButI told her 
they wouldn’t come to be treated like 
dogs or any other animal.”’ 

“You had better have kept that to 
yourself, I think.’’ 

“Oh! if you are going to be disagree- 
able, good-by. You can go to your 
patient, sir. Christie, dear, if he is very, 
very ill—and I’m sure I hope he is—oh, 
how wicked I am !—May I have a new 
bonnet ? ”’ 

‘‘ Tf you really want one.”’ 

On the patient’s card was “ Mr. Petti- 
grew, 47 Manchester Square.”’ 

As soon as Staines entered the room the 
first patient told him who and what he 
was, a retired civilian from India; but he 
had got a son there still, a very rising 
man; wanted to be a parson, but he would 
not stand that ; bad profession ; don’t rise 
by merit; very hard to rise at all—no, 
India was the place. ‘‘ As for me, I made 
my fortune there inten years. Obliged to 
leave it now—invalid this many years; no 
tone. Tried two or three doctors in this 
neighborhood; heard there was a new 
one, had written a book on something. 
Thought I would try him.’’ 

To stop him, Staines requested to feel 
his pulse, and examine his tongue and 
eye. 

“You are suffering from indigestion,”’ 
said he. ‘‘I will write you a prescription ; 
but, if you want to get well, you must 


simplify your diet very much.”’ 
ae) ReEADE—VOL, VIII. 


258 


While he was writing the prescription, 
off went this patient’s tongue, and ran 
through the topics of the day, and into 
his family history again. 

Staines listened politely. He could af- 
ford it, having only this one. 

At last the first patient, having deliv- 
ered an octavo volume of nothing, rose to 
go; but it seems that speaking an infinite 
deal of nothing exhausts the body, though 
it does not affect the mind; for the first 
patient sank down in his chair again. ‘<I 
have excited myself too much—feel rather 
faint.”’ 

Staines saw no signs of coming syncope; 
he rang the bell quietly, and ordered a 
decanter of sherry to be brought; the 
first patient filled himself a glass; then 
another, and went off, revived, to chatter 
elsewhere. But at the door he said, ‘‘I 
had always a running account with Dr. 
Mivar. I suppose you don’t object to 
that system. Double fee the first visit, 
single afterward.”’ 

Dr. Staines bowed a little stiffly; he 
would have preferred the money. How- 
ever, he looked at the Blue-Book, and 
he found his visitor lived at 47 Manchester 
Square ; so that removed his anxiety. 

The first patient called every other day, 
chatted nineteen to the dozen, was ex- 
hausted, drank two glasses of sherry, and 
drove away. 

Soon after this a second patient called. 
This one was a deputy patient—Collett, a 
retired butler—kept a lodging-house, and 
waited at parties; he lived close by, but 
had a married daughter in Chelsea. 
Would the doctor visit her, and he would 
be responsible ? 

Staines paid the woman a visit or two, 
and treated her so effectually that soon 
her visits were paid to him. She was 
cured, and Staines, who by this time 
wanted to see money, sent to Collett. 

Collett did not answer. 

Staines wrote warmly. 

Collett dead silent. 

Staines employed a solicitor. 

Collett said he had recommended the 
patient, that was all; he had never said 
he would pay her debts. That was her 
husband’s business. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


Now, her husband was the mate of a 
ship; would not be in England for eight- 
een months. 

The woman, visited by lawyer’s clerk, 
cried bitterly, and said she and her chil- 
dren had scarcely enough to eat. 

Lawyer advised Staines to abandon the 
case, and pay him two pounds fifteen shil- 
lings, expenses. He did so. 

‘‘'This is damnable,’’ saidhe. ‘I must 
get it out of Pettigrew: by the by, he 
has not been here this two days.”’ 

He waited another day for Pettigrew, 
and then wrote to him. No answer. 
Called. Pettigrew gone abroad. House 
in Manchester Square to let. 

Staines went to the house-agent with 
his tale. Agent was impenetrable at 
first, but at last, won by the doctor’s 
manner and his unhappiness, referred 
him to Pettigrew’s solicitor; the solicitor 
was a respectable man, and said he would 
forward the claim to Pettigrew in Paris. 

But by this time Pettigrew was chat- 
ting and guzzling in Berlin; and thence 
he got to St. Petersburg. In that strong- 
hold of gluttony he gormandized more 
than ever, and, being unable to chatter it 
off the stomach, as in other cities, had 
apoplexy, and died. 

But, long before this, Staines saw his 
money was as irrecoverable as his sherry ; 
and he said to Rosa, “1 wonder whether 
I shall ever live to curse the human 
race ?”’ 

‘* Heaven forbid !’’ said Rosa. 
they use you cruelly, my poor, 
Christie ! ”’ 

Thus for months the young doctor’s 
patients bled him, and that was all. 

And Rosa got more and more moped at 
being in the house so much, and pestered 
Christopher to take her out, and he de- 
clined; and, being a man hard to beat, 
took to writing on medical subjects, in 
hopes of getting some money from the 
various medical and scientific publica- 
tions ; but he found it as hard to get the 
wedge in there as to get patients. 

At last Rosa’s remonstrance began to 
rise into something that sounded like re- 
proaches. One Sunday she came to him 
in her bonnet, and interrupted his studies 


Pan! 
poor 


A SIMPLETON. 


to say he might as well lay down the pen 
and talk. Novody would publish any- 
thing he wrote. 

Christopher frowned, but contained 
himself; and laid down the pen. 

‘‘T might as well not be married at all 
as to be a doctor’s wife. You are never 
seen out with me, not even to church. 
Do behave like a Christian, and come to 
church with me now.”’ 

Dr. Staines shook his head. 

«Why, I wouldn’t miss church for all 
the world. Any excitement is better than 
always moping. Come over the water 
with me. The time Jane and I went, the 
clergyman read a paper that Mr. Brown 
had fallen down in a fit. There was such 
a rush directly, and I’m sure fifty ladies 
went out—fancy, all Mrs. Browns! 
Wasn’t that fun ?”’ 

“Hun? I don’t see it. Well, Rosa, 
your mind is evidently better adapted to 
diversion than mine is. Go you to church, 
love; and I’ll continue my studies.’’ 

‘Then all I can say is, I wish I was 
back in my father’s house. Husband! 
friend ! companion !—I have none.”’ 

Then she burst out crying violently ; 
and being shocked at what she had said, 
and at the agony it had brought into her 
husband’s face, she went off into hys- 
terics ; and as his heart would not let him 
bellow at her, or empty a bucket on her 
as he could on another patient, she had a 
good long bout of them, and got her way ; 
for she broke up his studies for that day, 
at all events. 

Even after the hysterics were got under, 
she coutinued to moan and sigh very pret- 
tily, with her lovely, languid head _ pil- 
lowed on her husband’s arm; in a word, 
though the hysterics were real, yet this 
innocent young person had the presence 
of mind to postpone entire convalescence, 
and lay herself out to be petted all day. 
But fate willed it otherwise. While she 
was sighing and moaning, came to the 
door a scurrying of feet, and then a sharp, 
persistent ringing that meant something. 
The moaner cocked eye and ear, and said, 
in her every-day voice, which, coming so 
suddenly, sounded very droll, ‘‘ What is 
that, 1 wonder? ”’ 


259 


Jane hurried to the street-door, and 
Rosa recovered by magic ; and, preferring 
gossip to hysterics, in an almost gleeful 
whisper ordered Chistopher to open the 
door of the study. The Bijou was so 
small that the following dialogue rang 
in their ears: 

A boy in buttons gasped out, “Oh! if 
you please, will you ast the doctor to 
come round directly? there’s a _ hacci- 
dent.’’ 

«¢ La, bless me!’ said Jane, and never 
budged. 

“Yes, miss. It’s our missus’s little 
girl fallen right off an i chair, and cut her 
head dreadful, and smothered in blood.’’ 

“La, to be sure?’’ and she waited 
steadily for more. \ 

«* Ay, and missus she fainted right off ; 
and I’ve been to the regler doctor, which 
he’s out; and Sarah, the house-maid, 
said I had better come here: you was 
only just set up, she said; you wouldn’t 
have so much to do, says she.’’ 

‘That is all she knows,” said Jane. 
‘Why, our master they pulls him in 
pieces which is to have him fust.’’ 

“What an awful liar!’? ‘Oh, you 
good girl!’’ whispered Dr. Staines and 
Rosa in one breath. 

‘‘ Ah, well!’ said Buttons, ‘‘anyway, 
Sarah says she knows you are clever, cos 
her little girl as lives with her mother, 
and calls Sarah aunt, has bin to your 
*spensary with ringworm, and you cured 
her right off.”’ 

“Ay, and a good many more,”’ said 
Jane, loftily. She was a house-maid of 
imagination ; and while Staines was put- 
ting some lint and an instrument into his 
pocket, she proceeded to relate a number 
of miraculous cures. Dr. Staines inter- 
rupted them by suddenly emerging, and 
inviting Buttons to take him to the house. 

Mrs. Staines was so pleased with Jane 
for cracking up the doctor, that she gave 
her five shillings; and after that used to 
talk to her a great deal more than to the 
cook, which in due course set all three by 
the ears. 

Buttons took the doctor to a fine house 
in the same street, and told him his mis- 
tress’s name on the way—Mrs. Lucas. 


260 


He was taken up to the nursery, and 
found Mrs. Lucas seated, crying and la- 
menting, and a woman holding a little 
girl of about seven, whose brow had been 
cut open by the fender, on which she had 
fallen from a chair; it looked very ugly, 
and was even now bleeding. 

Dr. Staines lost no time; he examined 
the wound keenly, and then said kindly to 
Mrs. Lucas, ‘‘I am happy to tell you it is 
not serious.’’ He then asked for a large 
basin and some tepid water, and bathed 
it so softly and soothingly that the child 
soon became composed ; and the mother 
discovered the artist at once. He com- 
pressed the wound, and explained to Mrs. 
Lucas that the principal thing really was 
to avoid an ugly scar. ‘‘ There is no 
danger,’’ said he. He then bound the 
wound neatly up, and had the girl put 
to bed. ‘‘ You will not wake her at any 
particular hour, nurse. Let her sleep. 
Have a little strong beef tea ready, and 
give it her at any hour, night or day, she 
asks for it. But do not force it on her, 
or you will do her more harm than good. 
She had better sleep before she eats.”? _ 

Mrs. Lucas begged him to come every 
morning; and,as he was going, she shook 
hands with him, and the soft palm de- 
posited a hard substance wrapped in 
paper. He took it with professional 
gravity and seeming unconsciousness ; 
but, once outside the house, went home 
on wings. He ran up to the drawing- 
room, and found his wife seated, and play- 
ing at reading. He threw himself on his 
knees, and the fee into her lap; and, 
while she unfolded the paper with an 
ejaculation of pleasure, he said, ‘‘ Dar- 
ling, the first real patient—the first real 
fee. It is yours to buy the new bonnet.”’ 

“Oh, I’m so glad!’’ said she, with her 
eyes glistening. ‘But I’m afraid one 
can’t get a bonnet fit to wear—for a 
guinea.”’ 

Dr. Staines visited his little patient 
every day, and received his guinea. Mrs. 
Lucas also called him in for her own little 
ailments, and they were the best possible 
kind of ailments: being almost imagin- 
ary, there was no limit to them. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


her husband. ‘‘ They never ask me,”’ said 
she; ‘‘and Iam moped to death.”’ 

“It is hard,’’ said Christopher sadly. 
‘* But have a little patience. Society will 
come to you long before practice comes 
to me.”’ 

About two o’clock one afternoon a car- 
riage and pair drove up, and a gorgeous 
footman delivered a card, “ Lady Cicely 
Treherne.”’ 

Of course Mrs. Staines was at home, 
and only withheld by propriety from 
bounding into the passage to meet her 
school-fellow. However, she composed 
herself in the drawing-room; and _ pres- 
ently the door was opened, and a very 
tall young woman, richly but not gayly 
dressed, drifted into the room, and stood 
there a statue of composure. 

Rosa had risen to fly to her; but the 
reverence a girl of eighteen strikes into a 
child of twelve hung about her still ; and 
she came timidly forward, blushing and 
sparkling, a curious contrast in color 
and mind to her visitor; for Lady Cicely 
was Languor in person—her hair white- 
brown, her face a fine oval, but almost 
colorless ; her eyes a pale gray, her neck 
and hands incomparably white and beau- 
tiful—a lymphatic young lady, a live anti- 
dote to emotion. However, Rosa’s beauty, 
timidity, and undisguised affectionateness 
were something so different from what 
she was used to in the world of fashion 
that she actually smiled, and held out 
both her hands a little way. Rosa seized 
them and pressed them; they let her, and 
remained passive and limp. 

‘Oh, Lady Cicely!’’ said Rosa, ‘‘ how 
kind of you to come! ”’ 

** How kind of you to send to me,”’ was 
the polite but perfectly cool reply. ‘* But 
how you are gwown, and—may I say im- 
pwoved ?—you la petite Lusignan! -It is 
incwedible,’’ lisped her ladyship very 
calmly. 

“Twas only a child,’’ said Rosa. ‘‘ You 
were always so beautifuland tall, and kind 
to a little monkey like me. Oh, pray sit 
down, Lady Cicely, and talk of old times.”’ 

She drew her gently to the sofa, and 
they sat down hand in hand; but Lady 


Then did Mrs. Staines turn jealous of | Cicely’s high-bred reserve made her a 


A SIMPLETON. 


very poor gossip about anything that 
touched herself and her family ; so Rosa, 
though no egotist, was drawn into talking 
about herself more than she would have 
done had she deliberately planned the 
conversation. But here was an old school- 
fellow, and asingularly polite listener; and 
so out came her love, her genuine happi- 
ness, her particular griefs, and especially 
the crowning grievance, no society, moped 
to death, etc. 

Lady Cicely could hardly understand 
the sentiment in a woman who so evi- 
dently loved her husband. ‘‘Society !’’ 
said she, after due reflection, ‘‘ why, it is 
a boa.’? (And here I may as well explain 
that Lady Cicely spoke certain words 
falsely, and others affectedly ; and as for 
the letter r, she could say it if she made 
a hearty effort, but was generally too 
lazy to throw her leg over it.) ‘‘ Society ! 
I’m dwenched to death with it. If I 
could only catch fiah lke other women, 
and love somebody, I would rather have 
a tete-a-lete with him, than to go teawing 
about all day and all night, from one un- 
intwisting cwowd to another. To be 
sure,’’ said she, puzzling the matter out, 
“you are a beauty, and would be more 
looked at.’’ 

‘<The idea ! and—oh, no! no! it is not 
that. But even in the country we had 
always some society.”’ 

“Well, dyah believe me, with your ap- 
peawance, you can have as much society 
as you please; but it will boa you to 
death, as it does me, and then you will 
long to be left quiet with a sensible man 
who loves you.”’ 

Said Rosa, ‘‘ When shall I have another 
tete-a-tete with you, I wonder? Oh, it 
has been such a comfort to me! Bless 
you for coming. There—I wrote to Ce- 
cilia, and Emily, and Mrs. Bosanquest 
that is now, and all my sworn friends, 
and to think of you being the one to come 
—you that never kissed me but once, and 
an earl’s daughter into the bargain.’’ 

“Ha! ha! ha!’ Lady Cicely actually 
laughed for once in a way, and she did 
not feel the effort. ‘As for kissing,”’ 
said she, ‘‘if I fall shawt, fawgive me. I 
was nevaa vewy demonstwative.”’ 


261 


“No; and Ihave had alesson. That 
Florence Cole—Florence Whiting that 
was, you know—was always kissing me, 
and she has turned out a traitor. VU 
tell you all about her.’’ And she did. 

Lady Cicely thought Mrs. Staines a 
little too unreserved in her conversation, 
but was so charmed with her sweetness 
and freshness that she kept up the ac- 
quaintance, and called on her twice a 
week during the season. At first she 
wondered that her visits were not re- 
turned; but Rosa let out that she was 
ashamed to call on foot in Grosvenor 
Square. 

Lady Cicely shrugged her beautiful 
shoulders a little at that; but she con- 
tinued to do the visiting, and to enjoy the 
simple, innocent rapture with which she 
was received. 

This lady’s pronunciation of many 
words was false or affected. She said 
‘* o9od-murning ’’ for ‘ good-morning,”’ 
and turned other vowels into diphthongs, 
and played two or three pranks with her 
“r’s.”? But we cannot be all imperfec- 
tion: with her pronunciation her folly 
came toa full stop. I really believe she 
lisped less nonsense and bad taste in a 
year than some of us articulate in a day. 
To be sure, folly is generally uttered in a 
hurry, and she was too deplorably lazy 
to speak fast on any occasion what- 
ever. | 

One day Mrs. Staines took her upstairs, 
and showed her from the back window 
her husband pacing the yard waiting for 
patients. Lady Cicely folded her arms, 
and contemplated him at first with a sort 
of zoological curiosity. Gentleman pacing 
back yard like hyena she had never seen 
before. 

At last she opened her mouth in a whis- 
per, ‘‘ What is he doing ? ”’ 

‘‘ Waiting for patients.’’ 

“Oh! Waiting—for—patients ? ”’ 

‘Hor patients that never come, and 
never will come.’’ 


« Cawious !—How little. I know~ of 
life ! 

“Tt is that all day, dear, or else writ 
ing.”’ 


Lady Cicely, with her eyes fixed on 


262 


Staines, made a motion with her hand 
that she was attending. 

‘“*And they won’t publish a word he 
writes.”’ 

‘Poor maniii7% 

‘Nice for me, is it not? ”’ 

-“JT begin to understand,’’ said Lady 
Cicely quietly, and soon after retired with 
her invariable composure. 

Meantime Dr. Staines, like a good hus- 
band, had thrown out occasional hints to 
Mrs. Lucas that he had a wife, beautiful, 
accomplished, moped. More than that, 
he went so far as to regret to her that 
Mrs. Staines, being in a neighborhood 
new to him, saw so little society; the 
more so as she was formed to shine, and 
had not been used to seclusion. 

All these hints fell dead on Mrs. Lucas. 
A handsome and skillful doctor was wel- 
come to her: his wife—that was quite 
another matter. 

But one day Mrs. Lucas saw Lady 
Cicely Treherne’s carriage standing at 


the door. The style of the whole turnout 
impressed her. She wondered whose it 
was. 


On another occasion she saw it drive 
up, and the lady get out. She recognized 
her; and thevery next day this parvenue 
said adroitly, ““ Now, Dr. Staines, really 
you can’t be allowed to hide your wife in 
this way.’’ (Stainesstared.) ‘* Why not 
introduce her to me next Wednesday ? 
It is my night. I would give a dinner 
expressly for her, but I don’t like to do 
that while my husband is in Naples.’’ 

When Staines carried the invitation to 
his wife she was delighted, and kissed 
him with childish frankness. 

But the very next moment she became 
thoughtful, uneasy, depressed. ‘Oh, 
dear! I’ve nothing to wear.”’ 

“Oh, nonsense, Rosa! Your wedding 
outfit. ’’ 

“The idea! I can’t go as a bride. 
It’s not a masquerade.”’ 

“But you have other dresses.”’ 

‘* All gone by, more or less, or not fit 
for such parties as she gives. A hun- 
dred carriages !”’ 

‘‘Bring them down, and let me see 
them.”’ 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


‘Oh, yes!’? And the lady who had 
nothing to wear paraded a very fair show 
of dresses. 

Staines saw something to admire in all 
of them. Mrs. Staines found more to ob- 
ject to in each, 

At last he fellupona silver-gray silk, of 
superlative quality. 

‘That! It is as old as the hills,’’ 
shrieked Rosa. 

“Tt looks just out of the shop. Come, 
tell me the truth: how often have you 
worn it? ”’ 

“‘T wore it before 1 was married.’’ 

“¢ Ay, but how often ? ”’ 

‘*Twice. Three times, I believe.’’ 

“Tthought so. It is as good as new.”’ 

“But 1 have had it solong by me. I 
had it two years before I made it up.”’ 

“What does that matter? Do you 
think the people can tell how long a 
dress has been lurking in your wardrobe ? 
This is childish, Rosa. There, with that 
dress aS good as new, and your beauty, 
you will be aS much admired, and per- 
haps hated, as your heart can desire.”’ 

‘‘T am afraid not,’’ said Rosa naively. 
“Oh, how I wish I had known a week 
ago !’’ 

‘‘T am very thankful you did not,”’’ 
said Staines dryly. 


At ten o’clock Mrs. Staines was nearly 
dressed; at quarter past ten she de- 
manded ten minutes; at half-past ten she 
sought a reprieve ; at a quarter to eleven, 
being assured that the street was full of 
carriages which had put down at Mrs. 
Lucas’s she consented to emerge, and in 
a minute they were at the house. 

They were shown first into a cloak- 
room, and then into a tea-room, and then 
mounted the stairs. One servant took 
their names, and bawled them out to an- 
other four yards off, he to another about 
as near, and so on; and they edged them- 
selves into the room, not yet too crowded 
to move in. 

They had not taken many steps, on the 
chance of finding their hostess, when a 
slight buzz arose, and seemed to follow 
them. 

Rosa wondered what that was, but only 


‘A SIMPLETON. 


for a moment ; she observed a tall, stout, 
aquiline woman fix an eye of bitter, dia- 
bolical, malignant hatred on her ; and, as 
she advanced ugly noses were cocked dis- 
dainfully, and scraggy shoulders elevated 
at the risk of sending the bones through 
the leather, and a titter or two shot after 
her. A woman’s instinct gave her the 
key at once ; the sexes had complimented 
her at sight, each in its way—the men 
with respectful admiration, and the wo- 
men with their inflammable jealousy, and 
ready hatred in another of the quality 
they value most in themselves. But the 
country girl was too many for them: for 
she would neither see nor hear, but moved 
sedately on, and calmly crushed them with 
her southern beauty. Their dry powdered 
faces would not live by the side of her 
glowing skin, with Nature’s delicate gloss 
upon it, and the rich blood mantling be- 
low it. The got-up beauties—~. e., the 
majority—seemed literally to fade and 
wither as she passed. 

Mrs. Lucas got to her, suppressed a 
slight maternal pang, having daughters 
to marry, and took her line in a moment : 
here was a decoy-duck. Mrs. Lucas was 
all graciousness, made acquaintance, and 
took a little turn with her, introducing 
her to one or two persons; among the 
rest, to the malignant woman, Mrs. Barr. 
Mrs. Barr, on this, ceased to look daggers, 
- and substituted icicles; but, on the hate- 
ful beauty moving away, dropped the 
icicles, and resumed the poniards. 

- The rooms filled ; the heat became op- 
pressive, and the mixed odors of flowers, 
scents, and perspiring humanity, sicken- 
ing. Some, unable to bear it, trickled out 
of the room, and sat all down the stairs. 

Rosa began to feel faint. Up camea 
tall, sprightly girl, whose pertness was 
redeemed by a certain bonhomie, and 
said, ‘‘ Mrs. Staines, I believe? I am to 
make myself agreeable to you. That is 
the order from headquarters.’’ 

‘* Miss Lucas,’’ said Staines. 

She jerked a little off-hand bow to him, 
and said, ‘‘ Will you trust her to me for 
five minutes ? ”’ 

‘* Certainly.”’ 
like it. 


But he did not much 


263 


Miss Lucas carried her off, and told Dr. 
Staines, over her shoulder, now he could 
flirt to his heart’s content. 

‘‘Thank you,’’ said he dryly. 
await your return.”’ 

“Oh! there are some much greater 
flirts here than I am,’’ said the ready 
Miss Lucas; and, whispering something 
in Mrs. Staines’s ear, suddenly glided with 
her behind a curtain, pressed a sort of 
button fixed to a looking-glass door. The 
door opened, and behold they were in a de- 
licious place, for which I can hardly find 
a word, since it was a boudoir and a con- 
servatory in one: a large octagon, the 
walls lined from floor to ceiling with look- 
ing-glasses of moderate width at inter- 
vals, and with creepers that covered the 
intervening spaces of the wall, and were 
trained so as to break the outline of the 
glasses without greatly clouding the re- 
flection. Ferns, in great variety, were 
grouped in a deep crescent, and in the 
bight of this\green bay were a small table 
and chairs. As there were no hothouse 
plants, the temperature was very cool, 
compared with the reeking oven they had 
escaped ; and a little fountain bubbled and 
fed a little meandering gutter that trickled 
away among the ferns; it ran crystal clear 
over little bright pebbles and shells. It 
did not always run, you understand ; but 
Miss Lucas turned a secret tap, and 
started it. 

“©Oh, how heavenly !’’ said Rosa, with 
a sigh of relief, ‘and how good of you to 
bring me here !”’ 

“Yes: by rights I ought to have waited 
till you fainted; but there is no making 
acquaintance among all those people. 
Mamma will ask such crowds; one is like 
a fly in a glue-pot.”’ 

Miss Lucas had good nature, smartness, 
and animal spirits ; hence arose a vivacity 
and fluency that were often amusing, and 
passed for very clever. Reserve she had 
none; would talk about strangers or 
friends, herself, her mother, her God, and 
the last buffoon singer, ina breath. At 
a hint from Rosa she told her who the 
lady in the pink dress was, and the lady 
in the violet velvet, and so on; for each 
lady was defined by her dress, and, more 


sda Sit 


264 WORKS OF 


or less, quizzed by the show-womapn, not 
exactly out of malice, but because it is 
smarter and more natural to decry than 
to praise, and a little médisance is the 
spice to gossip, belongs to it, as mint- 
sauce tolamb. So they chattered away, 
and were pleased with each other, and 
made friends, and there, in cool grot, quite 
forgot the sufferings of their fellow-creat- 
ures in the adjacent Turkish bath, yelept 
Society. It was Rosa who first recol- 
lected herself. ‘‘ Will not Mrs. Lucas 
be angry with me if I keep you all to 
myself ? ’’ 

‘Oh, no! but Iam afraid we must go 
into the hothouse again. I like the 
green-house best, with such a nice com- 
panion.”’ 

They slipped noiselessly into the throng 
again, and wriggled about, Miss Lucas 
presenting her new friends to several 
ladies and gentlemen. 

Presently Staines found them, and then 
Miss Lucas wriggled away; and, in due 
course, the room was thinned by many 
guests driving off home, or to balls and 
other receptions, and Dr. Staines and 
Mrs. Staines went home to the Bijou. 
Here the physician prescribed bed; but 
the lady would not hear of such a thing 
until she had talked it over. So they 
compared notes, and Rosa told him how 
well she had got on with Miss Lucas and 
madea friendship. ‘‘ But for that,”’ said 
she, “I should be sorry I went among 
those people, such a dowdy.”’ 

“Dowdy!” said Staines. ‘‘ Why, you 
stormed the town; you were the great 
success of the night, and, for all I know, 
of the season.’’ The wretch delivered 
this with unbecoming indifference. 

‘‘Tt is too bad to mock me, Christie. 
Where were your eyes ?”’' 

‘*To the best of my recollection they 
were one on each side of my nose.”’ 

“Yes, but some people are eyes. and 
no eyes.”’ 

‘‘T scorn the imputation ; try me.’’ 

“‘Very well. Then, did you see that 
lady in sky-blue silk, embroidered with 
flowers and flounced with white velvet, 
and the corsage point lace; and oh! such 
emeralds ? ”’ 


CHARLES 


READE. 


“T did; a tall, skinny woman, with 
eyes resembling her jewels in color, 
though not in brightness.’’ 

‘* Never mind her eyes; it is her dress 
Iam speaking of. Exquisite; and what 
a coiffure! Well, did you see her in the 
black velvet, trimmed so deep with Chan- 
tilly lace, wave on wave, and her head- 
dress of crimson flowers, and such a 
revere of diamonds; oh, dear! oh, 
dear !”’ 

‘‘] did, love. The room was an oven, 
but her rubicund face and suffocating 
costume made it Seem a furnace.’’ 

‘Stuff! Well, did you see the lady in 
the corn-colored silk, and poppies in her 
hair ? ’’ 

‘Of course I did. Ceres in person. She 
made me feel very hot too: but I cooled 
myself at her pale, sickly face.’’ 

‘“Never mind their faces; that is not 
the point.”’ 

“Oh, excuse me! itis always a point 
with us benighted males, all eyes and no 
eyes.”’ 

“Well, then, the lady in white, with 
cherry velvet bands, and a white tunic 
looped with crimson, and head-dress of 
white illusion a la vierge, I think they 
callit.* 

‘It was very refreshing, and adapted 
to that awful atmosphere. It was the 
nearest approach to nudity I ever saw, 
even among fashionable people.’’ 

‘It was lovely ; and then that superb 
figure in white illusion and gold, with all 
those narrow flounces over her slip of 
white silk glacé and a wreath of white 
flowers, with gold wheat ears among 
them, in her hair; and oh! oh! oh! her 
pearls, Oriental, and as big as al- 
monds ! ”’ 

«And oh! oh! oh! her nose! reddish 
and as long as a woodcock’s.”’ 

“‘Noses ! noses! stupid! That is not 
what strikes you first in a woman dressed 
like an angel.”’ 

“Well, if you were to run up against 
that one, as I nearly did, her nose would 
be the thing that would strike you first. 
Nose! it was a rostrum ! the spearhead 
of Goliath.’’ 


‘Now don’t, Christopher. This is no 


a — 


= — 


A SIMPLETON. 


laughing matter. Do you mean you were 
not ashamed of your wife? I was.” 

‘“No, I was not ; you had but one rival 
—a very young lady, wise before her age, 
a blonde, with violet eyes. She was 
dressed in light mauve-colored silk, with- 
out a single flounce, or any other tom- 
foolery to fritter away the sheen and color 
of an exquisite material ; her sunny hair 
was another wave of color, wreathed 
with a thin line of white jasmine flowers 
closely woven, that scented the air. This 
girl was the moon of that assembly, and 
you were the sun.”’ 

‘‘T never even saw her.”’ 

‘“Hyes, and no eyes. She saw you, and 
said, ‘Oh, what a beautiful creature !’ for 
I heard her. As for the oldstagers, whom 
you admire so, their faces were all clogged 
with powder, the pores stopped up, the 
true texture of the skin abolished. They 
looked downright nasty whenever you or 
that young girl passed by them. Then it 
was you saw to what a frightful extent 
women are got up in our days, even 
young women, and respectable women. 
No, Rosa, dress can do little for you; you 
have beauty—real beauty.’’ 

“Beauty! That passes unnoticed un- 
less one is well dressed.”’ 

‘Then what an obscure pair the Apollo 
Belvidere and the Venus de Medicis must 
be!”’ 

“Oh ! they are dressed—in marble.’’ 

Christopher Staines then smiled. 

‘‘ Well done,’’ said he admiringly. 
“That is a knock-down blow. So now 
you have silenced your husband, go you 
to bed directly. I can’t afford you dia- 
monds; so I will take care of that little 
insignificant trifle, your beauty.’’ 


Mrs. Staines and Mrs. Lucas exchanged 
calls,and soon Mrs. Staines could no longer 
complain she was out of the world. Mrs. 
Lucas invited her to every party, because 
her beauty was an instrument of attrac- 
tion she knew how to use; and Miss Lucas 
took a downright fancy to her; drove her 
in the Park, and on Sundays to the Zoo- 
logical Gardens, just beginning to be 
fashionable. 

The Lucases rented a box at the opera ; 


205 


and if it was not let at the library by six 
o'clock, and if other engagements per- 
mitted, word was sent round to Mrs. 
Staines, as a matter of course, and she 
was taken to the opera. She began al- 
most to live at the Lucases’, and to be 
oftener fatigued than moped. 

The usual order of things was inverted ; 
the maiden lady educated the matron ; 
for Miss Lucas knew all about everybody 
in the Park, honorable or dishonorable ; 
all the scandals, and all the flirtations ; 
and whatever she knew, she related point- 
blank. Being as inquisitive as voluble, 
she soon learned how Mrs. Staines and 
her husband were situated. She took 
upon her to advise her in many things, 
and especially impressed upon her that 
Dr. Staines must keep a carriage if he 
wanted to get on in medicine. ‘This piece 
of advice accorded so well with Rosa’s 
wishes that she urged it on her husband 
again and again. 

He objected that no money was coming 
in, and therefore it would be insane to add 
to their expenses. Rosa persisted, and at 
last worried Staines with her importunity. 
He began to give rather short answers. 
Then she quoted Miss Lucas against him. 
He treated the authority with marked 
contempt; and then Rosa fired up a 
little. Then Staines held his peace; but 
did not buy a carriage to visit his no 
patients. 

So at last Rosa complained to Lady 
Cicely Treherne, and made her the judge 
between her husband and herself. 

Lady Cicely drawled out a prompt but 
polite refusal to play that part. All that 
could be elicited from her, and that with 
difficulty, was, ‘Why quall with your 
husband about a cawwige? He is your 
best friend.’’ 

“Ah, that he is!’’ said Rosa; ‘ but 
Miss Lucas is a good friend, and she 
knows the world. We don’t; neither 
Christopher nor I.”’ 

So she continued to nag at her husband 
about it, and to say that he was throw- 
ing his only chance away. 

Galled as he was by neglect, this was 
irritating, and, at last, he could not help 
telling her she was unreasonable. ‘* You 


266 


live a gay life, and Lasad one. I consent 
to this, and let you go about with these 
Lucases, because you were so dull; but 
you should not consult them in our private 
affairs. Their interference is indelicate 
and improper. I will not set up a car- 
riage till I have patients to visit. Iam 
sick of seeing our capital dwindle, and no 
income created. I will never set up a car- 
riage till I have taken a hundred-guinea 
fee; | 

‘*Oh! Then we shall go splashing 
through the mud all our days.”’ 

‘*Or ride in a cab,’’ said Christopher, 
with a quiet doggedness that left no hope 
of his yielding. 

One afternoon Miss Lucas called for 
Mrs. Staines to drive in the Park, but did 
not come upstairs; it was an engage- 
ment, and she knew Mrs. Staines would 
be ready, or nearly. Mrs. Staines, not to 
keep her waiting, came down rather has- 
tily, and, inthe very passage, whipped out 
of her pocket a little glass, and a little 
powder-puff, and puffed her face all over 
ina trice. She was then going out; but 
her husband called her into the study. 
*“ Rosa, my dear,’’ said he, ‘‘ you were go- 
ing out with a dirty face.” 

“‘Oh,’’ cried she, “‘ give me a glass 

“There is no need of that. All you 
want is a basin and some nice rain-water. 
I keep a little reservoir of it.” 

He then handed her the same with 
great politeness. She looked in his eye, 
and saw he was not to be trifled with. 
She complied like a lamb, and the heav- 
enly color and velvet gloss that resulted 
were admirable. 

He kissed her, and said, ‘‘ Ah! now 
you are my Rosa again. Oblige me by 
handing over that powder-puff to me.’’ 
She looked vexed, but complied. ‘“* When 
you come back I will tell you why.”’ 

“You are a pest,’’? said Mrs. Staines, 
and so joined her friend, rosy with rain- 
water and a rub. 

‘Dear me, how handsome you look to- 
day !’? was Miss Lucas’s first remark. 

Rosa never dreamed that rain-water 
and a rub could be the cause of her look- 
ing so well. 

‘Tt is my tiresome husband,”’ said she. 


} 9? 


“WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


‘‘ He objects to powder, and he has taken 
away my puff.’’ 

«* And you stood that ? ”’ 

‘‘ Obliged to.’’ 

“Why, you poor-spirited little creature, 
I should like to see a husband presume to 


interfere with me in those things. Here, 
take mine.”’ 
Rosa hesitated a little. ‘* Well—no—l 


think not.”’ 

Miss Lucas laughed at her, and quizzed 
her so on her allowing a man to interfere 
in such sacred things as dress and cos- 
metics that she came back irritated with 
her husband, and gave him a short an- 
swer or two. Then he asked what was 
the matter. 

“You treat me like a child—taking 
away my very puff.” 

“TI treat you like a beautiful flower 
that no bad gardener shall wither while 
IT am here.”’ 

‘‘“What nonsense! How could that 
wither me? It is only violet powder— 
what they put on babies.”’ 

** And who are the Herods that put it 
on babies ? ”’ 

‘Their own mothers, that love them 
ten times more than the fathers do.’’ 

‘And killa hundred of them for one a 
man ever kills. Mothers!—the most 
wholesale homicides in the nation. We 
will examine your violet powder. Bring 
it down here.”’ 

While she was gone, he sent for a 
breakfast-cupful of flour: and when she 
came back he had his scales out, and 
begged her to put a teaspoonful of flour 
into one scale, and of violet powder into 
another. The flour kicked the beam, as 
Homer expresses himself. 

‘* Put another spoonful of flour.”’ 

The one spoonful of violet powder out- 
weighed the two of flour. 

‘““Now,’’ said Staines, “‘does not that 
show you the presence of a mineral in 
your vegetable powder? I suppose they 
tell you it is made of white violets dried, 
and triturated in a diamond mill. Let us 
find out what metal it is. We need not 
go very deep into chemistry for that.’’ 
He then applied a simple test, and de- 
tected the presence of lead in large quan- 


A SIMPLETON. 


tities. Then he lectured her: ‘‘ Invisible 
perspiration is a process of nature neces- 
sary to health and to life. The skin is 
made porous for that purpose. You can 
kill anybody in an hour or two by closing 
the pores. A certain infallible ass, called 
Pope Leo XII., killed a little boy in two 
hours by gilding him to adorn the pag- 
eant of his first procession as pope. But 
what is death to the whole body must be 
injurious to a part. What madness, then, 
to clog the pores of so large and impor- 
tant a surface as the face, and check the 
invisible perspiration : how much more 
to insert lead into your system every day 
of your life: accumulative poison, and 
one so deadly and so subtle that the 
Sheffield file-cutters die in their prime 
from merely hammering on a leaden an- 
vil. And what do you gain by this sui- 
cidal habit ? No plum has a sweeter bloom 
or more delicious texture than the skin of 
your young face; but this mineral filth 
hides that delicate texture, and substi- 
tutes a dry, uniform appearance, more 
like a certain kind of leprosy than health. 
Nature made your face the rival of 
peaches, roses, lilies; and you say, ‘ No; 
I know better than my Creator and my 
God; my face shall be like a dusty mil- 
ler’s. Go into any flour-mill, and there 
you shall see men with faces exactly like 
your friend Miss Lucas’s. But before a 
miller goes to his sweetheart, he always 
washes his face. You ladies would never 
get a miller down to your level in brains. 
It is a miller’s dirty face our monomani- 
acs of women imitate, not the face a mil- 
ler goes a-courting with.”’ 

‘La! what a fuss about nothing !”’ 

** About nothing! Is your health noth- 
ing? Is your beauty nothing? Well, 
then, it will cost you nothing to promise 
me never to put powder on your face 
again.’’ 

‘“Very well, I promise. 
will you do for me?”’ 

** Work for you—write for you—suffer 
for you—be self-denying for you—and 
even give myself the pain of disappoint- 
ing you now and then—looking forward 
to the time when I shall be able to say 
‘Yes’ to everything you ask me. Ah, 


Now, what 


267 


child ! you little know what it costs me 
to say ‘No’ to you.’’ 

Rosa put her arms around him and ac- 
quiesced. She was one of those who go 
with the last speaker; but, for that very 
reason, the eternal companionship of so 
flighty and flirty a girl as Miss Lucas 
was injurious to her. 

One day Lady Cicely Treherne was sit- 
ting with Mrs. Staines, smiling languidly 
at her talk, and occasionally drawling out 
a little plain good sense, when in came 
Miss Lucas, with her tongue well hung, 
as usual, and dashed into twenty topics 
at once. 

This young lady, in her discourse, was 
like those oily lttle beetles you see in 
small ponds, whose whole life is spent in 
tacking—confound them !—generally at 
right angles. What they are in naviga- 
tion was Miss Lucas in conversation: 
tacked so eternally from topic to topic 
that no man on earth, and not every 
woman, could follow her. 

At the sight and sound of her, Lady 
Cicely congealed and stiffened, Easy 
and unpretending with Mrs. Staines, she 
was all dignity, and even majesty, in the 
presence of this chatterbox; and the 
smoothness with which the transfigura- 
tion was accomplished marked that ac- 
complished actress the high-bred woman 
of the world. 

Rosa, better able to estimate the 
change of manner than Miss Lucas 
was, who did not know how little this 
Sawney was afflicted with misplaced 
dignity, looked wistfully and distressed 
at her. Lady Cicely smiled kindly in 
reply, rose, without seeming to hurry— 
catch her condescending to be rude to 
Charlotte Lucas—and took her depart- 
ure, with a profound and most gracious 
courtesy to the lady who had driven her 
away. 

Mrs. Staines saw her downstairs, and 
said ruefully, ‘‘I am afraid you do not 
like my friend Miss Lucas. She is a 
great rattle, but so good-natured and 
clever.”’ 

Lady Cicely shook her head. ‘‘ Clevaa 
people don’t talk so much nonsense be- 
fore strangaas.”’ 


268 WORKS 


“‘Oh, dear!’’ said Rosa. ‘‘I was in 
hopes you would like her.” 

“Do you like her? ”’ 

““Indeed I do; but I shall not, if she 
drives an older friend away.”’ 

‘« My dyah, I’m not easily dwiven from 
those I esteem. But you undarstand that 
is not a woman for me to mispwonownce 
my ‘ah’s’ befaw—NOR FOR YOU TO MAKE 
A BOSOM FRIEND OF—ROSA STAINES.”’ 

She said this with a sudden maternal 
solemnity and kindness that contrasted 
nobly and strangely with her yea-nay 
style, and Mrs. Staines remembered the 
words years after they were spoken. 

It so happened that, after this, Mrs. 
Staines received no more visits from 
Lady Cicely for some time, and that 
vexed her. She knew her sex enough to 
be aware that they are very jealous, and 
she permitted herself to think that this 
high-minded Sawney was jealous of Miss 
Lucas. 

This idea, founded on a general esti- 
mate of her sex, was dispelled by a few 
lines from Lady Cicely, to say her family 
and herself were in deep distress: her 
brother, Lord Aycough, lay dying from 
an accident. 

Then Rosa was all remorse, and ran 
down to Staines to tell him. She found 
him with an open letter in his hand. It 
was from Dr. Barr, and on the same sub- 
ject. The doctor, who had always been 
friendly to him, invited him to come 
down at once to Hallowtree Hall, in 
Huntingdonshire, to a consultation. 
There was a friendly intimation to start 
at once, as the patient might die at any 
moment. 

Husband and wife embraced each other 
in a tumult of surprised thankfulness. 
A few necessaries were thrown into a 
carpet-bag, and Dr. Staines was soon 
whirled into Huntingdonshire. Having 
telegraphed beforehand, he was met at 
the station by the earl’s carriage and 
people, and driven to the Hall. He was 
received by an old silver-haired butler, 
looking very sad, who conducted him to 
a boudoir, and then went and tapped 
gently at the door of the patient’s room. 
It was opened and shut very softly, and 


e 


OF CHARLES READE. 


Lady Cicely, dressed in black, and look- 
ing paler than ever, came into the 
room. 
VSO Drostainessst sink??? 

He bowed. 


‘‘Thank you for coming so promptly. 
Dr. Barr is gone. I fear he thinks—he 
thinks—oh, Dr. Staines, no sign of life 
but in his poor hands, that keep moving 
day and night.’’ 

Staines looked very grave at that. 

Lady Cicely observed it, and, faint at 
heart, could say no more, but led the way 
to the sick-room. 

There, in a spacious chamber, lighted 
by a grand oriel-window and two side 
windows, lay rank, title, wealth, and 
youth, stricken down in a moment by a 
common accident. The sufferer’s face 
was bloodless, his eyes fixed, and no 
signs of life but in his thumbs, and they 
kept working with strange regularity. 

In the room were a nurse and the sur- 
geon; the neighboring physician, who 
had called in Dr. Barr, had just paid his 
visit and gone away. 

Lady Cicely introduced Dr. Staines and 
Mr. White, and then Dr. Staines stood 
and fixed his eyes on the patient in pro- 
found silence. 

Lady Cicely scanned his countenance 
searchingly, and was struck with the 
extraordinary power and intensity it as- 
sumed in examining the patient; but the 
result was not encouraging. Dr. Staines 
looked grave and gloomy. 

At last, without removing his eye from 
the recumbent figure, he said quietly to 
Mr. White, ‘‘Thrown from his horse, 
RU raeant 

‘* Horse fell on him, Dr. Staines.’’ 

‘* Any visible injuries ? °’ 

«Yes. Severe contusions, and a rib 
| broken and pressed upon the lungs. I 
replaced and set it. Will you see?” 


a  S 


‘“Tf you please.”’ 

He examined and felt the patient, and 
said it had been ably done. 

Then he was silent and searching. 

At last he spoke again. ‘‘The motion 
of the thumbs corresponds exactly with 
his pulse.’’ 

‘Is that so, sir? ”’ 


A SIMPLETON. 


“It is. The case is without a parallel. 
How long has he been so ? ”’ 

‘‘ Nearly a week.”’ 

‘*[mpossible ! ”’ 

‘<It-is:soy sir. 

Lady Cicely confirmed this. 

‘All the better,’’ said Staines, upon 
reflection. ‘‘ Well, sir,’’ said he,. ‘‘the 
visible injuries having been ably relieved, 
IT shall look another way for the cause.’’ 
Then, after another pause, ‘“‘ I must have 
his head shaved.”’ 

Lady Cicely demurred a little to this; 
but Dr. Staines stood firm, and his lord- 
ship’s valet undertook the job. 

Staines directed him where to begin ; 
and when he had made a circular ton- 
sure on the top of the head, had it 
sponged with tepid water. 

“‘T thought so,’’ said he. ‘‘ Here is 
the mischief;’’ and he pointed to a 
very slight indentation on the left side 
of the pia mater. ‘‘Observe,’’ said he, 
“there is no corresponding indentation 
on the other side. Underneath this 
trifling depression a minute piece of 
bone is doubtless pressing on the most 
sensitive part of the brain. He must be 
trephined.”’ 

Mr. White’s eyes sparkled. 

** You are a hospital surgeon, sir? ”’ 

“Yes, Dr. Staines. I have no fear of 
the operation.’’ 

“Then I hand the patient over to 
you. The case at present is entirely 
surgical.”’ 

White was driven home, and soon re- 
turned with the requisite instruments. 
The operation was neatly performed, and 
then Lady Cicely was called in. She 
came trembling; her brother’s fingers 
were still working, but not so regularly. 

“That is only habit,’’ said Staines; 
‘‘it will soon leave off, now the cause is 
gone.”’ 

And truly enough, in about five 
minutes the fingers became quiet. The 
eyes became human next, and within half 
an hour after the operation the earl gave 
a little sigh. . 

Lady Cicely clasped her hands, and 
uttered a little cry of delight. 


‘‘This will not do,’”’ said Staines. ‘<I 


269 


shall have you screaming when he 
Speaks.” 

‘Oh, Dr. Staines ! will he ever speak ? ”’ 

‘‘T think so; and very soon. So be on 
your guard.” 

This strange scene reached its climax 
soon after by the earl saying, quietly— 

‘* Are her knees broke, Tom? ”’ 

Lady Cicely uttered a little scream, but 
instantly suppressed it. 

‘*No, my lord,”’ said Staines smartly ; 
‘‘only rubbed a bit. You can go to 
sleep, my lord. Ill take care of the 
mare.”’ 

* All right,’’ said his lordship, and com- 
posed himself to slumber. 

Dr. Staines, at the earnest request of 
Lady Cicely, stayed all night; and in 
course of the day advised her how to 
nurse the patient, since both physician 
and surgeon had done with him. 

He said the patient’s brain might be 
irritable for some days, and no women in 
silk dresses, crinoline, or creaking shoes, 
must enter the room. He told her the 
nurse was evidently a clumsy woman, 
and would be letting things fall. She 
had better get some old soldier used to 
nursing. ‘‘And don’t whisper in the 
room,’’ said he; ‘ nothing irritates them 
worse; and don’t let anybody play a 
piano within hearing; but in a day or 
two you may try him with slow and con- 
tinuous music on the flute or violin, if you 
like. Don’t touch his bed suddenly; 
don’t sit on it or lean on it. Dole sun- 
light into his room by degrees; and, 
when he can bear it, drench him with it. 
Never mind what the old school tell_ 
you. About these things they know a 
good deal less than nothing.’’ 

Lady Cicely received all this like an 
oracle. 

The cure was telegraphed to Dr. Barr, 
and he was requested to settle the fee. 
He was not the man to undersell the pro- 
fession, and was jealous of nobody, hav- 
ing a large practice and a very wealthy 


wife. So he telegraphed back—< Fifty 
guineas, and a guinea a mile from 
London.”’ 


So, as Christopher Staines sat at an 
early breakfast, with the carriage wait- 


270 


ing to take him to the train, two notes 
were brought him on a Salver. 

They were both directed by Lady 
Cicely Treherne. One of them _ con- 
tained a few kind and feeling words 
of gratitude and esteem; the other a 
check, drawn by the earl’s steward, for 
one hundred and thirty guineas. 

He bowled up to London, and told it 
all to Rosa. She sparkled with pride, 
affection, and joy. 

‘¢ Now, who says you are nota genius ?”’ 
She cried. “‘ A hundred and thirty guineas 
for one fee! Now, if you love your wife 
as she loves you, you will set up a 
brougham.”’ 


CHAPTER VIII. 


Dr. STAINES begged leave to distin- 
guish: he had not said he would set up a 
carriage at the first one hundred guinea 
fee, but only that he would not set up 
one before. There are misguided people 
who would call this logic; but Rosa said 
it was equivocating, and urged him so 
warmly that at last he burst out, ‘‘ Who 
can go on forever saying ‘No’ to the 
only creature he loves? ’’—and caved. 
In forty-eight hours more a brougham 
waited at Mrs. Staines’s door. The serv- 
ant engaged to drive it was Andrew 
Pearman, a bachelor, and hitherto an 
undergroom. He readily consented to 
be coachman, and do certain domestic 
work as well. So Mrs. Staines had a 
man-servant as well as a carriage. 

Ere long three or four patients called 
or wrote, one after the other. These 
Rosa set down to brougham, and crowed, 
She even crowed to Lady Cicely Tre- 
herne, to whose influence, and not to 
brougham’s, every one of these patients 
was owing. Lady Cicely kissed her, and 
demurely enjoyed the poor soul’s self- 
satisfaction. 

Staines himself, while he drove to or 
from these patients, felt more sanguine, 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


and, buoyed as he was by the conscious- 
ness of ability, began to hope that he 
had turned the corner. 

He sent an account of Lord Aycough’s 
case to a medical magazine; and so full 
is the world of flunkyism that this arti- 
cle, though he withheld the name, re- 
taining only the title, got the literary 
wedge in for him at once; and in due 
course he became a paid contributor to 
two medical organs, and used to study 
and write more, and indent the little 
stone yard less, than heretofore. 

It was about this time circumstances 
made him acquainted with Phoebe Dale. 
Her intermediate history I will dispose in 
fewer words than it deserves. Her Ruin, 
Mr. Reginald Falcon, was dismissed from 
his club for marking high cards on the 
back with his nail. This stopped his re- 
maining’ resource—borrowing; so he got 
more and more out at elbows till at last 
he came down to hanging about billiard- 
rooms, and making a little money by 
concealing his game; from that, how- 
ever, he rose to be a marker. 

Having culminated to that, he wrote 
and proposed marriage to Miss Dale, in 
a charming letter. She showed it to her 
father with pride. 

Now if his vanity, his disloyalty, his 
falsehood, his ingratitude, and his other 
virtues, had not stood in the way, he 
would have done this three years ago, 
and been jumped at. 

But the offer came too late; not for 
Phoebe—she would have taken him in a 
moment—but for her friends. <A baited 
hook is one thing, a bare hook is another. 
Farmer Dale had long discovered where 
Phoebe’s money went. He said not a 
word to her, but went up to town like a 
shot; found Falcon out, and told him he 
mustn’t think to eat his daughter’s bread. 
She should marry a man who could make 
a decent livelihood; and if she was to 
run away with him, why they’d starve 
together. The farmer was resolute, and 
spoke very loud, like one that expects 
opposition, and comes prepared to quar- 
rel. Instead of that, this artful rogue 
addressed him with deep respect and an 
affected veneration that quite puzzled the 


A SIMPLETON. 


old man; acquiesced in every word, ex- 
pressed contrition for his past misdeeds, 
and told the farmer he had quite deter- 
mined to labor with his hands. ‘‘ You 
know, farmer,’’ said he, ‘‘I am not the 
only gentleman who has come to that in 
the present day. Now, all my friends 
who have seen my sketches assure me I 
am a born painter; and a painter I’ll be 
—for love of Pheebe.’’ 

The farmer made a wry face. ‘‘ Paint- 
er! that is a sorry sort of a trade.’’ 

‘* You are mistaken. It’s the best trade 
going. There are gentlemen making their 
thousands a year by it.”’ 

‘Not in our parts, there bain’t. Stop 
abit. What be ye going to paint, sir? 
Housen or folk? ”’ 

“Oh, hang it! not houses. 
landscapes.”’ 

«Well, ye might just make a shift at 
it, I suppose, with here and there a sign- 
board. They are the best paid, our way; 
but, Lord bless ye, they wants head-piece! 
Well, sir, let me see your work. Then 
we'll talk further.’’ 

*<T’ll go to work this afternoon,’’ said 
Falcon eagerly ; then, with affected sur- 
prise, ‘‘ Bless me! I forgot. I have no 
palette, no canvas, no colors. You 
couldn’t lend me a couple of sovereigns 
to buy them, could you ?”’ 

“Ay, sir, I could, but I won’t. Vl 
lend ye the things, though, if you have a 
mind to go with me and buy ’em.’’ 

Falcon agreed, with a lofty smile, and 
the purchases were made. 

Mr. Falcon painted a landscape or two 
out of his imagination. The dealer to 
whom he took them declined them ; one 
advised the gentleman painter to color 
tea-boards: ‘‘That’s your line,’’ said he. 

‘“The world has no taste,’ said the 
gentleman painter ; ‘‘but it has got lots 
of vanity: Pll paint portraits. ”’ 

He did—and formidable ones. His por- 
traits were amazingly like the people, 
and yet unlike men and women, espe- 
cially about the face. One thing, he 
didn’t trouble with lights and shades, 
but went slap at the features. 

His brush would never have kept him : 
but he carried an instrument in the use 


Figures, 


? 


271 


of which he was really an artist, viz., 
his tongue. By wheedling and under- 
selling—for he only charged a pound for 
the painted canvas—he contrived to live ; 
then he aspired to dress as well as live. 
With this second object in view, he hit 
upon a characteristic expedient. 

He used to prowl about ; and when he 
saw a young woman sweeping the after- 
noon streets with a long silk train, and, 
in short, dressed to ride in the park, yet 
parading the streets, he would take his 
hat off to her with an air of profound re- 
spect, and ask permission to take her 
portrait. Generally he met a prompt 
rebuff ; but if the fair was so unlucky as 
to hesitate a single moment, he told her 
a melting tale: he had once driven his 
four-in-hand, but by indorsing his friend’s 
bills was reduced to painting lkenesses— 
admirable likenesses in oils, only a guinea 
each. 

His piteous tale provoked more jibes 
than pity ; but as he had no shame, the 
rebuffs went for nothing. He actually 
did get a few sitters by his audacity, and 
some of the sitters actually took the pict- 
ures and paid for them; others declined 
them with fury as soon as they were fin- 
ished. These he took back with a piteous 
sigh that sometimes extracted half a 
crown. ‘Then he painted over the re- 
jected one, and let it dry; so that 
sometimes a paid portrait would present 
a beauty enthroned on the débris of two 
or three rivals, and that is where few 
beauties would object to sit. 

All this time he wrote nice letters to 
Phoebe, and adopted the tone of the 
struggling artist, and the true lover, 
who wins his bride by patience, per- 
severance, and indomitable industry; a 
babbled of ‘‘Self-help.’’ 

Meantime Phoebe was not idle; an ex- 
cellent business woman, she took imme- 
diate advantage of a new station that 
was built near the farm to send up milk, 
butter, and eggs to London. Being gen- 
uine they sold like wild-fire. Observing 
that, she extended her operations by 
buying of other farmers and forwarding 
to London; and then, having, of course, 
an eye to her struggling artist, she told 


R72 


her father she must have a shop in Lon- 
don, and somebody in it she could depend 
upon. 

‘With all my heart, wench,’’ said he; 
‘but it must not be thou. I can’t spare 
thee.’’ 

‘¢ May I have Dick, father ? ”’ 

“Dick! Heis rather young.’’ 

‘But he is very quick, father, and 
minds every word [ tell him.” 

‘Ay, heisas fond of thee as ever a 
cow was of a calf. Well, you can try 
him,’’ 

So the love-sick woman of business set 
up a little shop, and put her brother Dick 
in it, and all tosee more of her struggling 
artist. She stayed several days, to open 
the lttle shop and start the business. 
She advertised pure milk, and challenged 
scientific analysis of everything she sold. 
This came of her being a reader. She 
knew, by the journals, that we live ina 
sinful and adulterating generation; and 
anything pure must be a Godsend to the 
poor poisoned public. 

Now Dr. Staines, though known to the 
profession aS a diagnost, was also an 
analyst, and this challenge brought him 
down on Phcebe Dale. He told her he 
was a physician, and in search of pure 
food for his own family—would she really 
submit the milk to analysis ? 

Phoebe smiled an honest country smile, 
and said, ‘‘Surely, sir.”’ She gave him 
every facility, and he applied those simple 
tests which are commonly used in France, 
though hardly known in England. 

He found it perfectly pure, and told her 
so; and gazed at Phoebe for a moment, 
as a phenomenon. 

She smiled again at that, her broad 
country smile. ‘‘That is a wonder in 
London, I dare say. It’s my belief half 
the children that die here are perished 
with watered milk. Well, sir, we shan’t 
have that on our souls, father and I: he 
isa farmer in Essex. This comes a many 
miles, this milk.’’ 

Staines looked in her face with kindly 
approval marked on his own eloquent 
features. She blushed a little at so fixed 
a regard. Then he asked her if she would 
supply him with milk, butter, and eggs. 


WORKS OF CHARLES 


READE. 


“Why, if you mean sell you them, yes, 
sir, with pleasure. But for sending them 
home to you in this big town, as some do, 
I can’t, for there’s only brother Dick and 
me: it is an experiment like.”’ 


‘“ Very } wells? wsald Staines. (slew 
send for them.’’ 
“Thank you kindly, sir. I hope you 


won't be offended, sir; but we only sell 
for ready money.”’ 

‘‘ All the better: my order at home is, 
no bills.”’ 

When he was gone, Phoebe, assuming 
vast experience, though this was only her 
third day, told Dick that was one of the 
right sort. ‘‘ And oh, Dick!’ said she, 
‘‘did you notice his eye? ”’ 

‘‘Not particklar, sister.”’ 

‘*'There, now ! the boy is blind. Why, 
twas like a jewel. Such an eye I never 
saw in a man’s head, nor a woman’s 
neither.”’ 

Staines told his wife about Phoebe and 
her brother, and spoke of her with a cer- 
tain admiration that raised Rosa’s curios- 
ity, and even that sort of vague jealousy 
that fires at bare praise. ‘‘I should like 
to see this phenomenon,”’ said she. ‘* You 
shall,’’ said he: ‘‘I have to call on Mrs. 
Manly. She lives near. I will drop you 
at the little shop, and come back for 
you.”’ 

He did so, and that gave Rosa a quarter ° 
of an hour to make her purchases. When 
he came back he found her conversing 
with Phoebe as if they were old friends, 
and Dick glaring at his wife with awe 
and admiration. He could hardly get 
her away. 

She was far more extravagant in her 
praises than Dr. Staines had been. ‘‘What 
a good creature!’ said she. ‘* And how 
clever! To think of her setting up a 
shop like that all by herself ; for her Dick 
is only seventeen.”’ 

Dr. Staines recommended the little 
shop wherever he went, and even extend- 
ed its operations. He asked Phoebe to 
get her own wheat ground at home, and 
send the flour up in bushel bags. ‘‘ These 
assassins, the bakers,’’ said he, “‘ are put- 
ting copper into the flour now as well as 
alum. Pure flour is worth a fancy price 


A SIMPLETON. 27 


to any family. With that we can make 
the bread of life. What you buy in the 
shops is the bread of death.”’ 

Dick was a good, sharp boy, devoted to 
his sister. He stuck to the shop in Lon- 
don, and handed the money to Phoebe 
when she came for it. She worked for it 
in Essex, and extended her country con- 
nection for supply as the retail business 
increased. 

Staines wrote an article on pure food, 
and incidentally mentioned the shop as a 
place where flour, milk, and butter were 
to be had pure. This article was pub- 
lished in the Lancet, and caused quite a 
run upon the little shop. By and by 
Phoebe enlarged it, for which there were 
great capabilities, and made herself a 
pretty little parlor, and there she and 
Dick sat to Falcon for their portraits ; 
here, too, she hung his rejected land- 
scapes. They were fair in her eyes; what 
matter whether they were like nature? 
his hand had painted them. She knew 
from him that everybody else had rejected 
them. With all the more pride and love 
did she have them framed in gold, and 
hung up with the portraits in her little 
sanctum. 

For a few months Phoebe Dale was as 
happy as she deserved to be. Her lover 
was working, and faithful to her—at least 
she saw no reason to doubt it. He came 
to see her every evening, and seemed de- 
voted to her; would sit quietly with her, 
or walk with her, or take her to a play, 
or a music-hall—at her expense. 

She now lived in a quiet elysium, with 
a bright and rapturous dream of the fut- 
ure; for she saw she had hit on a good 
vein of business, and should soon be inde- 
pendent, and able to indulge herself with 
a husband, and ask no man’s leave. 

She sent to Essex for a dairymaid, and 
set her to churn milk into butter, coram 
populo, at a certain hour every morning. 
This made a new sensation. At other 
times the woman was employed to deliver 
milk and cream to a few favored custom- 
ers. 

Mrs. Staines dropped in now and then, 
and chatted with her. Her sweet face 
and her naiveté won Phoebe’s heart; and 


ie) 


one day, as happiness is apt to be com- 
municative, she let out to her, in reply to 
a feeler or two as to whether she was 
quite alone, that she was engaged to be 
married to a gentleman; ‘‘ but he is not 
rich, ma’am,’’ said Phoebe plaintively ; 
‘he has had trouble—obliged to work for 
his living, like me; he painted these pict- 
ures, every one of them. If it was not 
making too free, and you could spare a 
guinea—he charges no more for the pict- 
ure, only you must go to the expense of 
the frame.”’ 

‘* Of course I will,’”’ said Rosa warmly, 
‘“V’ll sit for it here any day you like.”’ 

Now, Rosa said this out of her ever- 
ready kindness, not to wound Pheebe; 
but, having made the promise, she kept 
clear of the place for some days, hoping 
Phoebe would forget all about it. Mean- 
time she sent her husband to buy. 

In about a fortnight she called again, 
primed with evasions if she should be 
asked to sit; but nothing of the kind was 
proposed. Phoebe was dealing when she 
went in. The customers disposed of, she 
said to Mrs. Staines, ““Oh, ma’am! I am 
glad you are come. I have something I 
should like to show you.’’ She took her 
into the parlor, and made her sit down; 
then she opened a drawer, and took out 
a very small substance that looked like a 
tear of ground glass, and put it on the 
table before her. ‘‘ There, ma’am,”’’ said 
she, “‘ that is all he has had for painting 
a friend’s picture.’’ 

‘*Oh! what a shame !”’ 

‘* His friend was going abroad—to Na- 
tal; to his uncle that farms out there, 
and does very well. It is a first-rate 
part, if you take out a little stock with 
you, and some money; so my one gave 
him credit, and when the letter came 
with that postmark he counted on a 
five-pound note; but the letter only said 
he had got no money yet, but sent him 
something as a keepsake ; and there was 
this little stone. Poor fellow! he flung 
it down in a passion; he was so disap- 
pointed.’’ 

Phoebe’s great gray eyes filled; and 
Rosa gave a little coo of sympathy that 
was very womanly and lovable. 


a274 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


Phoebe leaned her cheek on her hand | no flaw: I don’t think you could buy it 


and said thoughtfully, ‘‘I picked it up, 
and brought it away ; for, after all, don’t 
you think, ma’am, it is very strange that 
a friend should send it all that way if it 
was worth nothing at all? ”’ 

‘Tt is impossible. He could not be so 
heartless.”’ 

‘«“And do you know, ma’am, when I 
take it up in my fingers it doesn’t feel 
like a thing that is worth nothing.”’ 

‘No more it does ; it makes my fingers 
tremble. May I take it home and show 
it to my husband ? he is a great physician 
and knows everything.”’ 

‘©T am sure I should be much obliged to 
you, ma’am.”’ 

Rosa drove home on purpose to show it 
to Christopher. She ran into his study. 
‘¢Oh, Christopher! please look at that. 
You know that good creature we have 
our flour and milk and things of. She is 
engaged, and he is a painter. Oh, such 
daubs! He painted a friend, and the 
friend sent that home all the way from 
Natal; and he dashed it down, and she 
picked it up, and what is it? ground glass, 
or a pebble, or what? ”’ 

‘‘Humph! by its shape, and the great 
—hbrilliancy—and refraction of light upon 
this angle, where the stone has got pol- 
ished by rubbing other stones in the 
course of ages, I’m inclined to think it 
is—a diamond.” 

«A diamond!’’ shrieked Rosa. ‘‘No 
wonder my fingers trembled. Oh! can 
it be? Oh, you good, cold-blooded Chris- 
tie! Poor thing! Comealong, Diamond ! 
Oh, you beauty! Oh, you duck !”’ 

‘Don’t be in such ahurry. I only said 
I thought. it was a diamond. Let me 
weigh it against water, and then I shall 
know.”’ 

He took it to his little laboratory, and 
returned in a few minutes, and said, 


‘Yes. It is just three times and a 
half heavier than water. It is a dia- 
mond.’’ 


«¢ Are you positive ? ’’ 

‘‘T’ll stake my existence.”’ 

«What is it worth? ”’ 

“My dear, I’m not a jeweler; but it 
is very large and pear-shaped, and | see 


for less than three hundred pounds.’’ 

‘‘Three hundred pounds! It is worth 
£300.”’ 

“Or sell it for more than £150.” 

‘*A hundred and fifty! It is worth 
Lay 

“«“Why, my dear, one would think you 
had invented ‘the diamond.’ Show me 
how to crystalize carbon, and I will 
share your enthusiasm.”’ 

“Oh! I leave you to carbonize crystal. 
I prefer to gladden hearts; and I will do 
it this minute, with my diamond.’ 

“Do, dear; and I will take that op- 
portunity to finish my second article on 
Adulteration.’’ 

Rosa drove off to Phoebe Dale. 

Now, Phoebe was drinking tea with 
Reginald Falcon, in her little parlor. 
‘‘Who is that, I wonder?” she said, 
when the carriage drew up. 

Reginald drew back a corner of the 
gauze curtain which had been drawn 
across the little glass door leading from 
the shop. 

‘“Itisa lady, and a beautiful — Oh! 
let me get out.’? And he rushed out at 
the door leading to the kitchen, not to be 
recognized. 

This set Phoebe all in a flutter; and the 
next moment Mrs. Staines tapped at the 
little door, then opened it, and peeped. 
‘*Good news! may I come in?”’ 

‘‘Surely,’’ said Phoebe, still troubled 
and confused by Reginald’s strange 
agitation. 

“There! It is a diamond !’’ screamed 
Rosa. ‘‘My husband knew it directly. 
He knows everything. If ever you are 
ill, go to him and nobody else — by the 
refraction, and the angle, and its being 
three times and a half as heavy as wa- 
ter. It is worth £300 to buy, and £150 
to sell.’’ 

‘Onn. 

“So don’t you go throwing it away, 
as he did.”’ (In a whisper) “‘ Two tea- 
cups! Was that him? I have driven 
him away. I am so sorry. Ill go; 
and then you can tell him. Poor fel- 
low ! 7’ ; 

“‘Oh, ma’am, don’t go yet !’’ said Phe- 


A SIMPLETON. 


be, trembling. ‘‘ IT haven’t half thanked 
you.”’ 

“Oh, bother thanks ! 
is the way.”’ 

“May 1?” 

‘You may, and must. There — and 
there — and there. Oh, dear, what nice 
things good luck and happiness are, and 
how sweet to bring them for once! ”’ 

Upon this Phoebe and she had a nice 
little cry together, and Mrs. Staines 
went off refreshed thereby, and as gay 
as a lark, pointing slyly at the door, 
and making faces to Phoebe that she 
knew he was there, and she only re- 
tired, out of her admirable discretion, 
that they might enjoy the diamond to- 
gether. 

When she was gone, Reginald, whose 
eye and ear had been at the key-hole, 
alternately gloating on the face and 
drinking the accents of the only woman 
he had ever really loved, came out, 
looking pale and strangely disturbed, 
and sat down at the table without a 
word. 

Phoebe came back to him full of the 
diamond. ‘‘Did you hear what she said, 
my dear? Itis a diamond; it is worth 
£150 at least. Why, what ails you? 
Ah! to be sure! you know the lady.”’ 

‘*T have cause to know her: Cursed 
jilt ! ’’ 

*“You seem a good deal put out at the 
sight of her.’’ ) 

‘It took me by surprise, that is all.’’ 

“It takes me by surprise too. I 
thought you were cured. I thought my 
turn had come at last.”’ 

Reginald met this in sullen silence. 
Then Phoebe was sorry she had said it; 
for, after all, it wasn’t the man’s fault 
if an old sweetheart had run into the 
room, and given him a start. So she 
made him some fresh tea, and pressed 
him kindly to try her home-made bread 
and butter. 

My lord relaxed his frown and con- 
sented ; and, of course, they talked dia- 
mond. 

He told her loftily he must take a stu- 
dio; and his sitters must come to him, 


Kiss me; that 


and must no longer expect to be immor- | 


275 


talized for £1. It must be £2 for a bust, 
and £3 for a kit cat. 

‘““Nay, but, my dear,’’ said Pheebe, 
‘they will pay no more because you 
have a diamond.’’ 

‘Then they will have to go unpainted,”’ 
said Mr. Falcon. 

This was intended for a threat. Phoebe 
instinctively felt that it might not be 
so received; she counseled moderation. 
‘It is a great thing to have earned a 
diamond,’’ said she; ‘‘ but ’tis only once 
in a life. Now, be ruled by me: go on 
just as you are. Sell the diamond, and 
give me the money to keep for you. 
Why, you might add a little to it, and 
so would I, till we made it up £200. And 
if you could only show £200 you had made 
and laid by, father would let us marry, 
and I would keep this shop—it pays well, 
I can tell you—and keep my gentleman in 
a sly corner: you need never be seen in 
Hy 

“‘ Ay, ay,’’ said he, ‘‘that is the small 
game. But I am a man that have al- 
ways preferred the big game. I shall set 
up my studio, and make enough to keep 
us both. So give me the stone, if you 
please. I shall take it round to them all, 
and the rogues won’t get it out of me for 
a hundred and fifty; why, itis as big as 
a nut.’’ 

‘“No, no, Reginald. Money has always 
made mischief between you and me. You - 
never had fifty pounds yet you didn’t fall 
into temptation. Do pray let me keep it 
for you; or else sell it—l know how to 
sell; nobody better—and keep the money 
for a good occasion.’’ 

‘“‘Is it yours, or mine? ”’ 
sulkily. 

‘Why, yours, dear; you earned it.”’ 

‘“Then give it me, please.’? And he 
almost forced it out of her hand. 

So now she sat down and cried over 
this piece of good luck, for her heart 
filed with forebodings. 

He laughed at her. But, at last, had 
the grace to console her, and assure her 
she was tormenting herself for nothing. 

‘Time will show,’’ said she sadly. 

Time did show. 

Three or four days he came, as usual, 


said he 


276 WORKS 
to laugh at her for her forebodings. But 
presently his visits ceased. She knew 
what that meant: he was living like a 
gentleman, melting his diamond, and 
playing her false with the first pretty 
face he met. 

This blow, coming after she had been 
so happy, struck Phoebe Dale stupid with 
grief. The line on her high forehead 
deepened; and at night she sat with her 
hands before her, sighing, and sighing, 
and listening for the footsteps that never 
came. 

“Oh, Dick !’’ she said, ‘‘ never you love 
any one. I am aweary of my life. And 
to think that, but for that diamond—oh, 
dear ! oh, dear! oh, dear! ”’ 

Then Dick used to try and comfort her 
in his way, and often put his arm round 
her neck, and gave her his rough but 
honest sympathy. Dick’s rare affection 
was her one drop of comfort: it was 
something to relieve her swelling heart. 

“Oh, Dick !’’’she said to him one night, 
‘7 wish I had married him.’’ 

““ What, to be ill-used ? ”’ 

‘“‘He couldn’t use me worse. I have 
been wife and mother and sweatheart 
and all to him, and to be left like this. 
He treats me like the dirt beneath his 
feet.”’ 

‘**Tis your own fault, Phoebe, partly. 
You say the word and I'll break every 
bone in his carcass.”’ 

‘““What, do him a mischief! Why, I’d 
rather die than harm a hair of his head. 
You must never lift a hand to him, or I 
shall hate you.’’ 

‘* Hate me, Phoebe ?’’ 

“«“ Ay, boy, | should. God forgive me, 
tis no use deceiving ourselves ; when a 
woman loves a man she despises, never 
you come between them; there’s no rea- 
son in her love, so it is incurable. One 
comfort ; it can’t go on forever; it must 
kill me before my time, and so best. If I 
was only a mother, and had a little Regi- 
nald to dandle on my knee and gloat 
upon till he spent his money and came 
back to me. That is why I said I wished 
I was his wife. Oh! why does God fill 
a poor woman’s bosom with love, and 
nothing to spend it on but a stone? for 


OF CHARLES 


READE. 


sure his heart must be one. If I had only 
something that would let me always love 
it—a little toddling thing at my knee, 
that would always let me look at it, and 
love it—something too young to be false 
to me, too weak to run away from 
my long — ing arms — and — yearn — ing 
heart!’’ Then came a burst of agony, 
and moans of desolation, till poor Dick 
blubbered loudly at her grief, and then 
her tears flowed in streams. 


Trouble on trouble. Dick himself got 
strangely out of sorts, and complained 
of shivers. Phoebe sent him to bed early, 
and made him some white wine whey very 
hot. In the morning he got up, and said 
he was better; but after breakfast he 
was violently sick, and suffered several 
returns of nausea before noon. ‘‘QOne 
would think I was poisoned,’’ said he. 

At one o’clock he was seized with a 
kind of spasm in the throat that lasted 
so long it nearly choked him. 

Then Phoebe got frightened, and sent 
to the nearest surgeon. He did not 
hurry, and poor Dick had another fright- 
ful spasm just as he came in. 

‘It is hysterical,’’ said the surgeon. 
‘No disease of the heart is there. Give 
him a little sal volatile every half hour.’’ 

In spite of the sal volatile these terrible 
Spasms seized him every half hour; and 
now he used to spring off the bed with a 
cry of terror when they came; and each 
one left him weaker and weaker ; he had 
to be carried back by the women. 

A sad, sickening fear seized on Phoebe. 
She left Dick with the maid, and, tying 
on her bonnet in a moment, rushed 
wildly down the street, asking the 
neighbors for a great doctor, the best 
that could be had for money. One sent 
her east a mile, another west, and she 
was almost distracted, when, who should 
drive up but Doctor and Mrs. Staines, to 
make purchases. She did not know his 
name, but she knew he was a doctor. 
She ran to the window, and cried, ‘‘ Oh, 
doctor, my brother! Oh, pray, come to 
him! Oh! oh!”’ 

Doctor Staines got quickly but calmly 
out, told his wife to wait, and followed 


A SIMPLETON. 


Pheebe upstairs. She told him, in a few 
agitated words, how Dick had _ been 
taken, and all the symptoms; especially 
what had alarmed her so, his springing 
off the bed when the spasm came. 

Doctor Staines told her to hold the 
patient up. He lost not a moment, but 
opened his mouth resolutely, and looked 
down. 3 

“The glottis is swollen,’’ said he. 
Then he felt his hands, and said, with 
the grave, terrible calm of experience, 
pvEreviss dying: {77 

Ss Ob ano nos! 
save him !”’ 

‘* Nothing can save him, unless we had 
a surgeon on the spot. Yes, I might 
save him, if you have the courage: 
opening his windpipe before the next 
spasm is his one chance.’’ 

‘Open his windpipe! Oh, doctor, it 
will kill him! Let me look at you.”’ 

She looked hard in his face. It gave 
her confidence. 

“Ts it the only chance? ”’ 

“The only one: and it is flying while 
we chatter.’’ 

SDOsaIrig 

He whipped out his lancet. 

“But I can’t look on it. I trust to you 
and my Saviour’s mercy.” 

She fell on her knees, and bowed her 
head in prayer. 

Staines seized a basin, put it by the 
bedside, made an incision in the windpipe, 
and got Dick down on his stomach, with 
his face over the bedside. Some blood 
ran, but not much. ‘‘Now!”’ he cried 
cheerfully, ‘‘a small bellows! There’s 
one in your parlor. Run.” 

Phoebe ran for it, and, at Dr. Staines’s 
direction, lifted Dick a little, while the 
bellows, duly cleansed, were gently applied 
to the aperture in the windpipe, and the 
action of the lungs delicately aided by 
this primitive but effectual means. 

He showed Phoebe how to do it, tore a 
leaf out of his pocketbook, wrote a hasty 
direction to an able surgeon near, and 
sent his wife off with it in the carriage. 

Phoebe and he never left the patient till 
the surgeon came with all the instruments 
required; among the rest, was a big, 


Oh, doctor, save him! 


277 


tortuous pair of nippers, with which he 
could reach the glottis and snip it. But 
they consulted, and thought it wiser to 
continue the surer method; and so a 
little tube was neatly inserted into Dick’s 
windpipe, and his throat bandaged ; and 
by this aperture he did his breathing for 
some little time. 

Phoebe nursed him like a mother; and 
the terror and the joy did her good, and 
made her less desolate. 

Dick was only just well when both of 
them were summoned to the farm, and 
arrived only just in time to receive their 
father’s blessing and his last sigh. 

Their elder brother, a married man, 
inherited the farm, and was executor. 
Phoebe and Dick were left £1,500 apiece, 
on condition of their leaving England 
and going to Natal. 

They knew directly what that meant. 
Phoebe was to be parted from a bad man, 
and Dick was to comfort her for the 
loss. 

When this part of the will was read to 
Phoebe, she turned faint, and only her 
health and bodily vigor kept her from 
Swooning right away. 

But she yielded. ‘‘ It is the will of the 
dead,’’ said she, ‘‘and I will obey it ; for, 
oh,if I had but listened to him more when 
he was alive to advise me, I should not 
sit here now, sick at heart and dry-eyed, 
when I ought to be thinking only of the 
good friend that is gone.’’ 

When she had come to this, she became 
feverishly anxious to be gone. 

She busied herself in purchasing agri- 
cultural machines, and stores, and even 
stock; and, to see her pinching the 
beasts’ ribs to find their condition, and 
parrying all attempts to cheat her, you 
would never have believed she could be a 
love-sick woman. 

Dick kept her up to the mark. He 
only left her to bargain with the master 
of a good vessel; for it was no trifle to 
take out horses, and cows, and machines, 
and bales of cloth, cotton, and linen. 

When that was settled they came 
into town together, and Phoebe bought 
shrewdly, at wholesale houses in the 
city, for cash, and would have bargains: 


278 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


and the little shop in 
turned into a warehouse. 

They were all ardor, as_ colonists 
should be; and, what pleased Dick 
most, she never mentioned Falcon; yet 
he learned from the maid that worthy 
had been there twice, looking very 
seedy. 

The day drew near. 
high spirits. 

‘*We shall soon make our fortune out 
there,’? he said; “and T’ll get-you a 
good husband.’’ 

She shuddered, but said nothing. 

The evening before they went to sail, 
Phoebe sat alone, in her black dress, 
tired with work, and asking herself, 
sick at heart, could she ever really 
leave England, when the door opened 
softly, and Reginald Falcon, shabbily 
dressed, came in, and threw himself 
into a chair. 

She started up with a scream, then 
sank down again, trembling, and turned 
her face to the wall. 

“*So you are going to run away from 
me?’’ said he savagely. 

«* Ay, Reginald,’’ said she meekly. 

‘This is your fine love; is it?’’ 

‘‘“You have worn it out, dear,’’ said 
she softly, without turning her head. 

‘‘T wish I could say as much; but, 
curse it, every time I leave you, I learn 
to love you more. I am never really 
happy but when I am with you.”’ 

“Bless you for saying that, dear. I 
often thought you must find that out one 
day ; but you took too long.”’ 

‘Oh, better late than never, Phoebe! 
Can you have the heart to go to the 
Cape, and leave me all alone in the world 
with nobody that really cares for me? 
Surely you are not obliged to go?”’ 

“Yes; my father left Dick and me 
£1,500 apiece to go: that was the con- 
dition. Poor Dick loves his unhappy sis- 
ter. He won’t go without me—I should 
be his ruin—poor Dick that really loves 
me; and he lay a-dying here, and the 
good doctor and me—God bless him !— 
we brought him back from the grave. 
Ah! you little know what I have gone 
through. You were not here. Catch 


Dick was in 


“ 


Street was 


you being near me when I am in trouble. 
There, I must go. I must go. I will 
go; if I fling myself into the sea half- 
way.” 

‘And if you do, I’ll take a dose of 
poison; for I have thrown away the 
truest heart, the sweetest, most unself- 
ish, kindest, generous—oh ! oh! oh !”’ 

And he began to howl. 

This set Phoebe sobbing. <“‘ Don’t cry, 
dear,’’? she murmured through her tears: 
‘if you have really any love for me, 
come with me.”’ 

“What, leave England, and go to a 
desert ?”’ 

** Love can make a desert a garden.”’ 

“Phoebe, Vl do anything else. IT’ll 
swear not to leave your side, I’ll never 
look at any other face but yours. But I 
can’t live in Africa.”’ 

‘“T know you can’t. It takes a little 
real love to go there with a poor girl like 
me. Ah, well, I’d have made you so 
happy. Weare not poor emigrants. I 
have a horse for you to ride, and guns to 
shoot; and me and Dick would do all the 
work for you. But there are others here 
you can’t leave for me. Well, then, 
good-by, dear. In Africa or here I 
shallalways love you; and many a salt 
tear I shall shed for you yet; manya one 
I have, as well you know. God _ bless 
you! Pray for poor Phoebe, that goes 
against her will to Africa, and leaves her 
heart with thee.”’ 

This was too much even for the selfish 
Reginald. He kneeled at her knees, and 
took her hand and kissed it, and actually 
shed a tear or two over it. 

She could not speak. He had no hope 
of changing her resolution: and _ pres- 
ently he heard Dick’s voice outside; so 
he got up to avoid him. ‘*T’ll come 
again in the morning before you go.” 
“Oh, no, no!’’ she gasped; ‘‘ unless 
you want me to die at your feet. I am 
almost dead now.’’ . 

Reginald slipped out by the kitchen. 

Dick came in, and found his sister lean- 
ing with her head back against the wall. 
‘“Why, Phoebe,” said he, ‘* whatever is 
the matter?’’ and he took her by the 
shoulder. 


Ee ee 


A SIMPLETON. 


She moaned, and he felt her all limp 
and powerless. 

‘“‘What is it, lass? Whatever is the 
matter? Is it about going away ?”’ 

She would not speak for a long time. 

When she did speak, it was to say 
something for which my male reader per- 
haps may hardly be prepared. 

‘¢Oh, Dick, forgive me! ”’ 

‘SWhy, what for? * 

““FHorgive me, or else kill me; I don’t 
care which.”’ | 

*“T do, though. There, I forgive you. 
Now what’s the crime ?”’ 

“Tcan’t go. Forgive me.”’ 

“ Can’t go? ”’ 

‘“‘T can’t. Forgive me.”’ 

‘‘T’m blest if I don’t believe that vaga- 
bond has been here tormenting of you 
again.”’ 

‘Oh! don’t miscall him. He is peni- 
tent. Yes, Dick, he has been here crying 
to me—and I can’t leave him. I can’t— 
I can’t. Dear Dick, you are young and 
stout-hearted ; take all the things over, 
and make your fortune out there; and 
leave your poor foolish sister behind. I 
should only fling myself into the salt sea 
if I left him now, and that would be peace 
to me, but a grief to thee.’’ 

‘* Lord sake! Phoebe, don’t talk so. I 
can’t go without you. And do but think. 
Why the horses are on board now, and 
all the gear. It’s my belief a good hid- 
ing is all you want to bring you to your 
senses; but I hain’t the heart to give 
you one, worse luck! Blessed if I know 
what to say or do.”’ 

““T won’t go!’ cried Phoebe, turning 
violent all of a sudden. ‘‘No, not if Iam 
dragged to the ship by the hair of my 
head. Forgive me.’? And with that 
word she was a mouse again. 

‘**Kh, but women are kittle cattle to 
drive,’’ said poor Dick ruefully. And 
down he sat at a nonplus, and very un- 
happy. 

Pheebe sat opposite, sullen, heartsick, 
wretched to the core, but determined 
not to leave Reginald. 

Then came an event that might have 
been foreseen, yet it took them both by 
surprise. 


279 


A light step was heard, and a graceful, 
though seedy, figure entered the room, 
with a set speech in his mouth : ‘* Pheebe, 
you are right. I owe it to your-long and 
faithful affection to make a sacrifice for 
you. I will go to Africa with you. I 
will go to the end of the world sooner 
than you shall say I care for any woman 
on earth but you.”’ 

Both brother and sister were so unpre- 
pared for this that they could hardly 
realize it at first. 

Phoebe turned her great, inquiring eyes 
on the speaker; and it was a sight to see 
amazement, doubt, and happiness ani- 
mating her features, one after another. 

*‘Ts this real ?’’ said she. 

** [ll sail with you to-morrow, Pheebe ; 
and I will make you a good husband, if 
you will have me.”’ 

‘That is spoke like a man,” said Dick. 
*¢ You take him at his word, Phoebe ; and 
if he ill-uses you out there, I’ll break 
every bone in his skin.’’ 

‘‘ How dare you threaten him?’’ said 
Phoebe. ‘‘ You had best leave the room.”’ 

Out went poor Dick, with the tear in 
his eye at being snubbed so. While he 
was putting up the shutters, Phoebe was 
making love to her pseudo-penitent. “ My 
dear,’’ said she, ‘‘ trust yourself to me. 
You don’t know all my love yet; for I 
have never been your wife, and I would 
not be your jade; that is the only thing 
Tl ever refused you. Trust yourself to me. 
Why, you never found happiness with 
others; try it with me. It shall be the 
best day’s work you ever did, going out 
in the ship with me. You don’t know 
how happy a loving wife can make her 
husband. [ll pet you out there as man 
was never petted. And besides, it isn’t 
for life; Dick and me will soon make a 
fortune out there, and then [’ll bring you 
home, and see you spend it any way you 
like but one. Oh, how I love you! do 
you love me a little? I worship the 
ground you walk on. I adore every hair 
of your head!’ Her noble arm went 
round his neck in a moment, and the 
grandeur of her passion electrified him 
so far that he kissed her affectionately, 
if not quite so warmly as she did him: 


280 


and so it was all settled. The maid was 
discharged that night, instead of the 
morning, and Reginald was to occupy 
her bed. Phoebe went upstairs with her 
heart literally on fire, to prepare his 
sleeping-room, and so Dick and Reginald 
had a word. 

‘“T say, Dick, how long will this voy- 
age be?” 

‘*T wo months, sir, I’m told.”’’ 

‘« Please to cast your eyes on this suit 
of mine. Don’t you think it is rather 
seedy—to go to Africa with? Why, I 
shall disgrace you on board the ship. 
I say, Dick, lend me three sovs., just 
to buy a new suit at the slop-shop.”’ 

‘‘Well, brother-in-law,’’ said Dick, “I 
don’t see any harm in that. Ill go and 
fetch them for you.”’ 

What does this sensible Dick do but go 
upstairs to Phoebe, and say, ‘‘He wants 
three pounds to buy a suit; am I to lend 
it him ? ”’ 

Pheebe was shaking and patting her 
penitent’s pillow. She dropped it on the 
bed in dismay. ‘ Oh, Dick, not for all 
the world! Why, if he had three sover- 
eigns he’d desert me at the water’s edge. 
Oh, God help me, how I love him! God 
forgive me, how I mistrust him! Good 
Dick! kind Dick! say we have suits of 
clothes, and we'll fit him like a prince, as 
he ought to be, on board ship; but not a 
shilling of money; and, my dear, don’t 
put the weight on me. You understand?”’ 

‘* Ay, mistress, I understand.”’ 

‘Good Dick ! ”’ 

“Oh, all right! and then, don’t you 
snap this here good, kind Dick’s nose off 
at a word again.”’ 

‘““Never. I get wild if anybody threat- 
ens him. Then I’m not myself. Forgive 
my hasty tongue. You know [ love you, 
dear ! ’’ 

“Oh, ay ! you love well enough. But 
seems to me your love is precious like 
cold veal; and your love for that chap 
is hot roast beef.’’ 

‘' Bal ha thay whats 

“Oh! ye can laugh now, can ye? ”’ 

Eat ha teha 17? 

‘Well, the more of that music the 
better for me.”’ 


WORKS OF CHARLES 


READE. 


“Yes, dear; but go and tell him.”’ 

Dick went down, and said, ‘I’ve got 
no money to spare, till I get to the Cape; 
but Phoebe has got a box full of suits, and 
I made her promise to keep it out. She 
will dress you like a prince, you may be 
sure.”’ 

“Oh! that is it, is it?’’ said Reginald 
dryly. 

Dick made no reply. 

At nine o’clock they were on board the 
vessel; at ten she weighed anchor, and 
a steam-vessel drew her down the river 
about thirty miles, then cast off, and left 
her to the southeasterly breeze. Up went 
sail after sail; she nodded her lofty head, 
and glided away for Africa. 

Phoebe shed afew natural tears at leav- 
ing the shores of Old England ; but they 
soon dried. She was demurely happy, 
watching her prize, and asking herself 
had she really secured it, and all in a few 
hours ? 

They had a prosperous voyage: were 
married at Cape Town, and went up the 
country, bag and baggage, looking out 
for a good bargain in land. Reginald 
was mounted on an English horse, and 
allowed to zigzag about, and shoot, and 
play, while his wife and brother-in-law 
marched slowly with their cavalcade. 

What with air, exercise, wholesome 
food, and smiles of welcome, and deli- 
cious petting, this egotist enjoyed him- 
self finely. He admitted as much. Says 
he one evening, to his wife, who sat by 
him for the pleasure of seeing him feed, 
“It sounds absurd; but I never was so 
happy in all my life.’’ 

At that, the celestial expression of her 
pastoral face, and the maternal gesture 
with which she drew her pet’s head to 
her queenly bosom, was a picture for 
celibacy to gnash the teeth at. 


CHAPTER IX. 


DURING this period, the most remark- 
able things that happened to Dr. and 


A SIMPLETON. 


Mrs. Staines were really those which I | there is no debt. 


have related as connecting them with 
Phoebe Dale and her brother; to which 
I will now add that Dr. Staines detailed 
Dick’s case in a remarkable paper, en- 
titled Qidema of the Glottis, and showed 
how the patient had been brought back 
from the grave by tracheotomy and arti- 
ficial respiration. He received a high 
price for this article. 

To tell the truth, he was careful not to 
admit that it was he who had opened the 
windpipe; so the credit of the whole 
operation was given to Mr. Jenkyn; and 
this gentleman was naturally pleased, 
and threw a good many consultation 
fees in Staines’s way. 

The Lucases, to his great comfort—for 
he had an instinctive aversion to Miss 
Lucas—left London for Paris in August, 
and did not return all the year. 

In February he reviewed his year’s 
work and twelve months’ residence in 
the Bijou. The pecuniary result was 
outgoings, £950; income, from fees, £280; 
writing, £90. 

He showed these figures to Mrs. 
Staines, and asked her if she could sug- 
gest any diminution of expenditure. 
Could she do with less housekeeping 
money ? 

‘¢Oh, impossible! You cannot think 
how the servants eat; and they won’t 
touch our home-made bread.’’ 

«The fools! Why?” 

“Oh! because they think it costs us 
less. Servants seem to me always to 
hate the people whose bread they eat.”’ 

*‘ More likely it is their vanity. Noth- 
ing that is not paid before their eyes 
seems good enough for them. Well, 
dear, the bakers will revenge ts. But 
is there any other item we could re- 
duce? Dress ?’’ 

“Dress! Why, I spend nothing.”’ 

‘‘ Forty-five pounds this year.”’ 

«Well, I shall want none next year.’’ 

‘Well, then, Rosa, as there is nothing 
we can reduce, | must write more, and 
take more fees, or we shall be in the 
wrong box. Only £860 left of our little 
capital; and, mind, we have not another 
shilling in the world. One comfort, 


281 


We pay ready money 
for everything.’’ 

Rosa colored a little, but said nothing. 

Staines did his part nobly. He read; 
he wrote; he paced the yard; he wore 
his old clothes in the house. He took 
off his new ones when he came in. He 
was all genius, drudgery, patience. 

How Phoebe Dale would have valued 
him, co-operated with him, and petted 
him, if she - had had the good luck to 
be his wife ! 


The season came back, and with it 
Miss Lucas, towing a brilliant bride, 
Mrs. Vivian, young, rich, pretty, and 
gay, with a waist you could span, and 
a thirst for pleasure. 

This lady was the first that ever made 
Rosa downright jealous. She seemed to 
have everything the female heart could 
desire ; and she was No. 1 with Miss Lu- 
cas this year. Now, Rosa was No. 1 last 
season, and had weakly imagined that 
was to last forever. But Miss Lucas had 
always a sort of female flame, and it 
never lasted two seasons. 

Rosa did not care so very much for 
Miss Lucas before, except as a conven- 
ient friend; but now she was mortified 
to tears at finding Miss Lucas made more 
fuss with another than with her. 

This foolish feeling spurred her to at- 
tempt a rivalry with Mrs. Vivian in the 
very things where rivalry was hopeless. 

Miss Lucas gave both ladies tickets for 
a flower-show, where all the great folk 
were to be, princes and princesses, etc. 

‘But [have nothing to wear,”’ sighed 
Rosa. 

«Then you must get something, and 
mind it is not pink, please; for we must 
not clash in color. You know I’m dark, 
and pink becomes me.’’ (The selfish 
young brute was not half as dark as 
Rosa.) ‘‘ Mine is coming from Worth’s, 
in Paris, on -purpose. And this new 
Madame Cie, of Regent Street, has such 
a duck of a bonnet, just come from Pa- 
ris. She wanted to make me one from 
it; but I told her I would have none but 
the pattern bonnet, and she knows very 
well she can’t pass a copy off on me. 


282 WORKS 
Let me drive you up there, and you can 
see mine, and order one if you like it.”’ 

‘Oh, thank you! let me just run and 
speak to my husband first.’’ 

Staines was writing for the bare life, 
and a number of German books about 
him, slaving to make a few pounds, when 
in comes the buoyant figure and beaming 
face his soul delighted in. 

He laid down his work, to enjoy the 
sunbeam of love. 

‘Oh, darling! I’ve only come in for a 
minute. Weare going toa flower-show 
on the 13th; everybody will be so beau- 
tifully dressed—especially that Mrs. Viv- 
ian. I have got ten yards of beautiful 
blue silk in my wardrobe, but that is not 
enough to make a whole dress. Every- 
thing takes so much stuff now. Madame 
Cie does not care to make up dresses un- 
less she finds the silk, but Miss Lucas 
says she thinks, to oblige a friend of hers, 
she would do it for once in away. You 
know, dear, it would only take a few 
yards more, and it would last as a din- 
ner-dress for ever so long.’’ 

Then she clasped him round the neck, 
and Jeaned her head upon his shoulder, 
and looked lovingly up into his face. ‘I 
know you would like your Rosa to look as 
well as Mrs. Vivian.”’ 

‘“No one ever looks as well—in my eyes 
—as my Rosa. There, the dress will add 
nothing to your beauty ; but go and get 
it, to please yourself: it is very consider- 
ate of you to have chosen something of 
which you have ten yards already. See, 
dear, I’m to receive twenty pounds for 
this article; if research was paid, it 
ought to be a hundred. I shall add it all 
to your allowance for dresses this year. 
So no debt, mind; but come to me for 
everything.”’ 

The two ladies drove off to Madame 
Cie’s, a pretty shop, lined with dark vel- 
vet and lace draperies. 

In the back room they were packing a 
lovely bridal dress, going off, the follow- 
ing Saturday, to New York. 

«What! send from America to Lon- 
don! ’’ 

‘Oh, dear, yes!’’ exclaimed Madame 
Cie. ‘The American ladies are excellent 


OF CHARLES KEADE. 


customers. They buy everything of the 
best and the most expensive.”’ 

‘‘T have brought you a new customer,”’ 
said Miss Lucas; ‘‘and I want you to do 
a great favor, and that is to match a 
blue silk, and make her a pretty dress for 
the flower-show on the 13th.’’ 

Madame Cie produced a white muslin 
polonaise, which she was just going to 
send home to the Princess ——, to be 
worn over mauve. 

‘‘Oh, how pretty and simple!” ex- 
claimed Miss Lucas. 

‘‘T have some lace exactly like that,’’ 
said Mrs. Staines. 

“Then, why don’t you have a polo- 
naise? The lace is the only expensive 
part, the muslin is a mere nothing; and 
it is such a useful dress, it can be worn 
over any silk.” 

It was agreed Madame Cie was to send 
for the blue silk and the lace, and the 
dresses were to be tried on on Thursday. 

On Thursday, as Rosa went gayly into 
Madame Cie’s back room to have the 
dresses tried on, Madame Cie said, ** You 
have a beautiful lace shawl, but it wants 
arranging; in five minutes I could aston- 
ish you with what I could do to that 
shawl.”’ 

‘©Oh, pray do!’ said Mrs. Staines. 

The dressmaker kept her word. By 
the time the blue dress was tried on, 
Madame Cie had, with the aid of a few 
pins, plaits, and a bow of blue ribbon, 
transformed the half-lace shawl into one 
of the smartest and most dvzestingué 
things imaginable; but when the bill 
came in at Christmas, for that five 
minutes’ labor and distingué touch, she 
charged one pound eight. 

Before they left, Mrs. Staines ordered 
a bonnet like the pattern bonnet from 
Paris; and Madame Cie, with oily 
tongue, persuaded her to let her send 
home the pink bonnet, which was so 
becoming to her; it was only slightly 
soiled, and there were certainly two good 
wears out of it, and they would not quar- 
rel about the price, which the Simpleton 
understood to mean the price was to be 
small; whereas it meant this, “1,in my 
brutal egotism, cannot conceive that you 


A SIMPLETON. 


object to any price I charge, however 
high.’’ 

Madame Cie then told the ladies, in an 
artfully confidential tone, she had a quan- 
tity of black silk coming home, which she 
had purchased considerably below cost 
price ; and that she should like to make 
them each a dress—not for her own sake, 
but theirs—as she knew they would never 
meet such a bargain again. 

“You know, Miss Lucas,’’ she con- 
tinued, ‘‘we don’t want our money when 
we know our customer. Christmas is 
soon enough for us.” 

‘* Christmas is a long time off,’’ thought 
the young wife, ‘‘nearly ten months. I 
think I’ll have a black dress, Madame 
Cie; but I must not say anything to the 
doctor about it just yet, or he might 
think me extravagant.”’ 

‘*No one can ever think a lady extrav- 
agant for buying a black silk; it’s such 
-a useful dress; lasts forever—almost.”’ 

Days, weeks, and months rolled on, 
and with them an ever-rolling tide of 
flower-shows, dinners, at-homes, balls, 
operas, lawn-parties, concerts, and the- 
aters. 

Strange that in one house there should 
be two people who loved each other, yet 
their lives ran so far apart, except while 
they were asleep: the man all industry, 
self-denial, patience; the woman all fri- 
volity, self-indulgence, and amusement ; 
both chained to an oar, only one in a 
working-boat, the other in a painted 
galley. 

The woman got tired first, and her 
charming color waned sadly. She came 
to him for medicine to set her up. “I 
feel so languid ! ”’ 

‘No, no,”’ said he; “no medicine can 
do the work of wholesome food and 
rational repose. You lack the season of 
all natures, sleep. Dine at home three 
days running, and go to bed at ten.’’ 

On this the doctor’s wife went to a 
chemist for advice. He gave her a pink 
stimulant; and, as stimulants have two 
effects, viz., first, to stimulate, and then 
to weaken, this did her no lasting good. 
Doctor Staines cursed the London season, 
and threatened to migrate to Liverpool. 


283 


But there was worse behind. 

Returning one day to his dressing-room, 
just after Rosa had come downstairs, he 
caught sight of a red stain in a wash- 
hand-basin. He examined it; it was 
arterial blood. 

He went to her directly, and expressed 
his anxiety. 

‘Oh, it is nothing! ’’ said she. 

‘‘Nothing! Pray how often has it 
occurred ? ’’ 

“Once or twice. I must take your ad- 
vice, and be quiet, that is all.’’ 

Staines examined the housemaid; she 
lied instinctively at first, seeing he was © 
alarmed; but, being urged to tell the 
truth, said she had seen it repeatedly, 
and had told the cook. 

He went downstairs, and sat down, 
looking wretched. 

““Oh, dear!’’ said Rosa. 
the matter now? ”’ 

‘‘Rosa,’’ said he very gravely, “ there 
are two people a woman is mad to de- 
ceive—her husband and her physician. 
You have deceived both.’’ 

I suspect Dr. Staines merely meant to 
say that she had concealed from him an 
alarming symptom for several weeks; 
but she answered in a hurry, to excuse 
herself, and let the cat out of the bag— 
excuse my vulgarity. 

“‘It was all that Mrs. Vivian’s fault. 
She laughed at me so for not wearing 
them ; and she has a waist you can span 
—the wretch !”’ 

“Oh! then, you have been wearing 
stays clandestinely ? ’’ 

“Why, you know I have. Oh, what a 
stupid! I have let it all out.’’ 

‘* How could you do it, when you know, 
by experience, it is your death ?”’ 

“But it looks. so beautiful—a tiny 
waist.’’ 

*“ It looks as hideous as a Chinese foot, 
and, to the eye of science, far more dis- 
gusting ; it is the cause of so many nasty 
diseases.”? 

‘Just tell me one thing. 
looked at Mrs. Vivian ?’’ 

‘‘Minutely. I look at all your friends 
—with great anxiety, knowing no animal 
more dangerous than a fool. Vivian—a 


‘What is 


Have you 


284 


skinny woman, with a pretty face, lovely 
hair, good teeth, dying eyes—yes, lovely. 
A sure proof of a disordered stomach— 
and a waist pinched in so unnaturally, 
that I said to myself, ‘ Where on earth 
does this idiot put her liver?’ Did you 
ever read of the frog who burst trying to 
swell to an ox? Well, here is the rivalry 
reversed. Mrs. Vivian is a bag of bones 
in a balloon; she can machine herself 
into a wasp; but a fine young woman 
like you, with flesh and muscle, must kill 
yourself three or four times before you 
can make your body as meager, hideous, 
angular, and unnatural as Vivian’s. But 
all you ladies are monomaniacs. One 
might as well offer the truth to a gorilla. 
It brought you to the edge of the grave. 
Isaved you. Yet you could go and—God 
grant me patience! So I suppose these 
unprincipled women lent you their stays, 
to deceive your husband ? ”’ 

‘“No. But they laugh at me so that— 
Oh, Christie! ’m a wretch; I kept a pair 
at the Lucases’, and a pair at Madame 
Cie’s, and I put them on now and then.”’ 

“But you never appeared here in 
them.”’ 

‘What, before my tyrant? 
dared not ! ”’ 

“So you took them off before you came 
home ? ”’ 

Rosa hung her head, and said, ‘‘ Yes,”’ 
in a reluctant whisper. 

“You spent your daylight dressing. 
You dressed to go out; dressed again in 
stays; dressed again without them; and 
all to deceive your husband, and kill 
yourself, at the bidding of two shallow, 
heartless women, who would dance over 
your grave without a pang of remorse, or 
sentiment of any kind, since they live, 
like midges, only to dance in the sun, 
and suck some worker’s blood !’’ 

‘Oh, Christie! I’m so easily led, I am 
too great a fool to live. Kill me! ”’ 

And she kneeled down, and renewed 
the request, looking up in his face with 
an expression that might have disarmed 
Cain zpsum. 

He smiled superior. 
is, Are you sorry you 
naughty ? ”’ 


Oh, no, I 


“The question 
have been so 


WORKS OF CHARLES REHADE. 


‘Ves aear. Oh) oh 1k4 

‘Will you be very. good, to make 
up? 93 

“Oh, yes! Only tell me how, for it 
does not come natural to poor me.”’ 

‘Keep out of those women’s way for 
the rest of the season.’’ 

Fa ere 

‘‘Bringe your stays home, and allow 
me to do what I like with them.”’ 

“Of course. Cut them in a million 
pieces.”’ 

‘Till you are recovered you must be 
my patient, and go nowhere without 
me.”’ 

‘That is no punishment, I am sure.’’ 

‘Punishment! Am I the man to pun- 
ish you? I only want to save you.’’ 

“Well, darling, it won’t be the first 
time.”’ 

‘“No; but I do hope it will be the 
last.”’ 


CHAPTER X., 


Sublata causa tollitur effectus. The 
stays being gone, and dissipation moder- 
ated, Mrs. Staines bloomed again, and 
they gave one or two unpretending little 
dinners at the Bijou. Dr. Staines ad- 
mitted no false friends to these. They 
never were beyond eight; five gentlemen, 
three ladies. By this arrangement the 
terrible discursiveness of the fair, and 
man’s cruel disposition to work a sub- 
ject threadbare, were controlled and 
modified, and a happy balance of con- 
versation established. Lady Cicely Tre- 
herne was always invited, and always 
managed to come; for she said, ‘‘ They 
were the most agweeable little paaties 
in London, and the host and hostess 
both so intewesting.’’ In the autumn 
Staines worked double tides with the 
pen, and found a vehicle for medical 
narratives in a weekly magazine that 
did not profess medicine. 


This new vein put him in heart. His 


A SIMPLETON. 


fees, toward the end of the year, were 
less than last year, because there was 
no hundred guinea fee; but there was a 
marked increase in the small fees, and 
the unflagging pen had actually earned 
him £200, or nearly. So he was in good 
spirits. 

Not so Mrs. Staines; for some time 
she had been uneasy, fretful, and like a 
person with a weight on her mind. 

One Sunday she said to him, ‘*‘ Oh, 
dear, I do feel so dull! Nobody to go 
to church with me, nor yet to the Zoo.”’ 

“‘T’ll go with you,”’ said Staines. 

‘¢You will? To which ? ”’ 

“To bothy:yine for a> penny. in for a 
pound.’’ 

So to church they went; and Staines, 
whose motto was ‘‘ Hoc age,’’ minded 
his book. Rosa had some intervals of 
attention to the words, but found plenty 
of time to study the costumes. 

During the Litany in bustled Clara, the 
housemaid, with a white jacket on so like 
her mistress’s that Rosa clutched her 
own convulsively to see whether she had 
not beeh skinned of it by some devilish 
sleight of hand. 

No, it was on her back; but Clara’s 
was identical. 

In her excitement Rosa pinched Staines, 
and with her nose, that went like a wa- 
ter-wagtail, pointed out the malefactor. 
Then she whispered, ‘‘ Look! How dare 
she? My very jacket! Ear-rings too, 
and brooches, and dresses her hair like 
mine.’’ 

“Well, never mind,’’ whispered Staines. 
‘Sunday is her day. We have got all 
the week to shine. There, don’t look at 
her. ‘From all evil speaking, lying, and 
slandering—’ ”’ 

‘<T can’t keep my eyes off her.”’ 

** Attend to the Litany. Do you know, 
this is really a beautiful composition ? ’’ 

‘‘|’d rather do the work fifty times over 
myself.”’ 

‘“‘Hush! people will hear you.’’ 

When they walked home, after church, 
Staines tried to divert her from the con- 
sideration of her wrongs; but no—all 
other topics were too flat by comparison. 

She mourned the hard fate of mistresses 


285 


—unfortunate creatures that could not do 
without servants. 

“Is not that a confession that servants 
are good, useful creatures, with all their 
faults? Then, as to the mania for dress, 
why, that is not confined to them. It is 
the mania of the sex. Are you free 
fromeiteeee 

[ON OFM Ola courses nots 
lady? 

“Then she is your intellectual inferior, 
and more excusable. Any way, it is wise 
to connive at a thing we can’t help.”’ 

“What, keep her, after this ?—no, 
never. ’’ 

‘* My dear, pray do not send her away, 
for she is tidy in the house, and quick, 
and better than any one we have had 
this last six months; and you know you 
have tried a great number.”’ 

“To hear you speak, one would think 
it was my fault that we have so many 
bad servants.”’ 

“‘T never said it was your fault; but 
1 think, dearest, a little more forbear- 
ance in trifles—’’ 

‘Trifles! trifles—for a mistress and 
maid to be seen dressed alike in the same 
church? You take the servant’s part 
against me, that you do.”’ 

‘* You should not say that, even in jest. 
Come now, do you really think a jacket 
hke yours can make the servant look 
like you, or detract from your grace and 
beauty ? There is a very simple way: 
put your jacket by for a future occasion, 
and wear something else in its stead at 
churches 

‘A nice thing, indeed, to give in to 
these creatures! I won’t do it.’’ 

“Why won’t you, this once?” 

‘*Because 1 won’t—there ! ”’ 

‘“‘That is unanswerable,’’ said he. 

Mrs. Staines said that, but, when it 
came to acting, she deferred to her 
husband’s wish; she resigned her inten- 
tion of sending for Clara and giving her 
warning; on the contrary, when Clara 
let her in, and the white jackets rubbed 
together in the narrow passage, she 
actually said nothing, but stalked to her 
own room, and tore her jacket off, and 
flung it on the floor. 


But: 1 ‘am. a 


286 


Unfortunately, she was so long dress- | 


ing for the Zoo that Clara came in to 
arrange the room. She picks up the 
white jacket, takes it in both hands, 
gives it a flap, and proceeds to hang it 
up in the wardrobe. 

Then the great feminine heart burst 
its bounds. 

‘You can leave that alone. 
not wear that again.’’ 

Thereupon ensued an uneven encounter, 
Clara being one of those of whom Script- 
ure says, ‘‘The poison of asps is under 
their tongues.”’ 

‘‘La, ma’am,”’ said she, *‘ why, t’ain’t 
so very dirty.”’ 

“No; but it is too common.”’ 

“Oh! because I’ve got one like it. 
Ay, missises can’t abide a good-looking 
servant, nor to see ’em dressed becom- 
ings) 

‘‘Mistresses do not like servants to 
forget their place, nor wear what does 
not become their situation.”’ 

‘“My situation! Why, I can pay my 
way, go where I will. I don’t tremble 
at the tradesman’s knock, as some do.”’ 

‘Leave the room! Leave it this 
moment.’ 

“‘Leave the room, yes—and [ll leave 
the house too, and tell all the neighbors 
what I know about it.”’ 

She flounced out, and slammed the 
door, and Rosa sat down, trembling. 

Clara rushed to the kitchen, and there 
told the cook and Andrew Pearman how 
she had given it to the mistress, and 
every word she had said to her, with a 
good many more she had not. 

The cook laughed, and encouraged her. 

But Andrew Pearman was wroth, and 
said, ‘‘ You to affront our mistress like 
that! Why,if I had heard you, I’d have 
twisted your neck for ye.”’ 

“It would take a better man than you 
to do that. You mind your own busi- 
ness. Stick to your one-horse shay.’’ 

‘Well, I’m not above my place, for 
that matter. But you gals must always 
be aping your betters.”’ 

‘‘T have got proper pride, that is all, 
and you haven’t. You ought to be 
ashamed of yourself to do two men’s 


I shall 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


work—drive a brougham and wait on a 
horse, and then come in and wait at 
table. You area tea-kettle groom, that 
is what youare. Why, my brother was 
coachman to Lord Fitz-James, and gave 
his lordship notice the first time he had 
to drive the children. Says he, ‘I don’t 
object to the children, my lord, but with 
her ladyship in the carriage.’ It’s such 
servants as you as spoil places. No 
servant as knows what’s due to a serv- 
ant ought to know you. They’d scorn 
your ’quaintance, as I do, Mr. Pear- 
man.”’ 

“You are a stuck-up hussy and a sol- 
dier’s jade,’’ roared Andrew. 

‘*¢ And you area low tea-kettle groom.”’ 

This expression wounded the great 
equestrian heart to the quick; the rest 
of Sunday he pondered on it. The next 
morning he drove the doctor as_ usual, 
but with a very heavy soul. 

Meantime the cook made haste and 
told the baker, Pearman had “got it 
hot ’’ from the housemaid, and she had 
called him a tea-kettle groom; and in 
less than half an hour after that it was 
in every stable in the mews. Why, as 
Pearman was taking the horse out of 
the brougham, didn’t two little red- 
headed urchins call out, ‘‘ Here, come 
and see the tea-kettle groom!’’ and at 
night some mischievous boy chalked on 
the black door of the stable a large 
white tea-kettle, and next morning a 
drunken, idle fellow, with a clay pipe in 
his mouth, and a dirty pair of corduroy 
trousers, no coat, but a shirt very open 
at the chest, showing inflamed skin, the 
effect of drink, inspected that work of 
art with blinking eyes and vacillating 
toes, and said, “This comes of a chap 
doing too much. A few more like you 
and work would be scarce. A fine thing 
for gentlefolks to make one man fill two 
places! but it ain’t the gentlefolks’ fault, 
it’s the man as humors ’em.”’ 

Pearman was a peaceable man, and 
made no reply, but went on with his 
work, only during the day he told his 
master that he should be obliged to him 
if he would fill his situation as soon as 
convenient. The master inquired the 


A SIMPLETON. 


cause; and the man told him, and said 
the mews was too hot for him. 

The doctor offered him five pounds a 
year more, knowing he had a treasure ; 
but Pearman said, with sadness and firm- 
ness, that he had made up his mind to 
go, and go he would. 

The doctor’s heart fairly sank at the 
prospect of losing the one creature he 
could depend upon. | | 

Next Sunday evening Clara was out, 
and fell in with friends, to whom she 
exaggerated her grievance. 

Then they worked her up to fury, after 
the manner of servants’ friends. She 
came home, packed her box, brought it 
down, and then flounced into the room 
to Doctor and Mrs. Staines, and said, 
**T shan’t sleep another night in this 
house.”’ 

Rosa was about to speak, but Dr. 
Staines forbade her: he said, ‘‘ You had 
better think twice of that. You are a 
good servant, though for once you have 
been betrayed into speaking disrespect- 
fully. Why forfeit your character and 
three weeks’ wages? ”’ 

‘7 don’t: care for my wages. 
stay in such a house as this.”’ 

‘* Come, you must not be impertinent.”’ 

‘‘T don’t mean to, sir,’’ said she, low- 
ering her voice suddenly ; then, raising 
it as suddenly, ‘‘There are my keys, 
ma’am, and you can search my box.”’ 

‘Mrs. Staines will not search your box ; 
and you will retire at once to your own 
part of the house.”’ 

*“1’ll go further than that,’ said she, 
and soon after the street-door was 
slammed; the Bijou shook. 

At six o’clock next morning she came 
for her box. It had been put away for 
safety. Pearman told her she must wait 
till the doctor came down. She did not 
wait, but went at eleven, A.M., to a police 
magistrate, and took out a summons 
against Dr. Staines, for detaining a box 
containing certain articles specified— 
value under fifteen pounds. 

When Dr. Staines heard she had been 
for her box, but left no address, he sent 
Pearman to hunt for her. He could not 
find her. She avoided the house, but sent 


I won’t 


287 


a woman for her diurnal love-letters. Dr. 
Staines sent the woman back to fetch her. 
She came, received her box, her letters, 
and the balance of her wages, which was 
small, for Staines deducted the three 
weeks’ wages. 

Two days afterward, to his surprise, the 
summons was served. 

Out of respect for a court of justice, 
however humble, Dr. Staines attended 
next Monday, to meet the summons. 

The magistrate was an elderly man, 
with a face shaped like a hog’s, but much 
richer in color, being purple and pimply: 
so foul a visage Staines had rarely seen, 
even in the lowest class of the com- 
munity. 

Clara swore that her box had been 
opened, and certain things stolen out of 
it; and that she had been refused the 
box next morning. 

Staines swore that he had never opened 
the box, and that if any one else had, it 
was with her consent, for she had left the 
keys for that purpose. He bade the 
magistrate observe, that if a servant 
went away like this, and left no address, 
she put it out of the master’s power to 
send her box after her; and he proved he 
had some trouble to force the box on her. 

The pig-faced beak showed a manifest 
leaning toward the servant; but there 
wasn’t a leg to stand on; and he did not 
believe, nor was it credible, that anything 
had been stolen out of her box. 

At this moment Pearman, sent by 
Rosa, entered the court with an old gown 
of Clara’s that had been discovered in 
the scullery, and a scribbling-book of the 
doctor’s, which Clara had appropriated 
and written amorous verses in, very su- 
perior—in number—to those that have 
come down to us from Anacreon. 

‘‘Hand me those,’’ said the pig-faced 
beak. ‘‘ What are they, Dr. Staines?” 

‘‘T really don’t know. I must ask my 
servant.’ 

‘¢ Why, more things of mine that have 
been detained,’’ said Clara. 

“Some things that have been found 
since she left,’’? said Staines. 

‘Oh! those that hide know where to 
finde 


288 WORKS 

«Young woman,”’ said Staines, ‘‘do not 
insult those whose bread you have eaten, 
and who have given you many presents 
besides your wages. Since you are so 
ready to accuse people of stealing, permit 
me to say that this book is mine, and 
not yours; and yet, you see, it is sent 
after you because you have written your 
trash in it.” 

The purple, pig-faced beak went in- 
stantly out of the record, and wasted a 
great deal of time reading Clara’s poetry, 
and trying to be witty. He raised the 
question whose book this was. The girl 
swore it was given her by a lady who 
was now in Rome. Staines swore he 
bought it of a certain stationer, and, 
happening to have his pass-book in his 
pocket, produced an entry corresponding 
with the date of the book. 

The pig-faced beak said that the doc- 
tor’s was an improbable story, and that 
the gown and the book were quite enough 
to justify the summons. Verdict, one 


guinea costs. 2 Seiensk 


‘* What, because two things she never 
demanded have been found and sent after 
her? Thisis monstrous. I shall appeal 
to your superiors. ”’ 

“Tf you are impertinent, I'll fine you 
five pounds.’’ 

““Very well, sir. Now hear me: if this 
is an honest judgment, I pray God I may 
be dead before the year’s out; and if it 
isn’t, I pray God you may be.”’ 

Then the pig-faced beak fired up, and 
threatened to fine him for blaspheming. 

He deigned no reply, but paid the 
guinea, and Clara swept out of the court 
with a train a yard long, and leaning on 
the arm of a scarlet soldier, who avenged 
Dr. Staines with military promptitude. 

Christopher went home raging inter- 
nally, for hitherto he had never seen so 
gross a case of injustice. 

One of his humble patients followed 
him, and said, ‘‘I wish I had known, sir; 
you shouldn’t have come here to be in- 
sulted. Why, no gentleman can ever get 
justice against a servant-girl when he is 
sitting. It is notorious, and that makes 
these hussies so bold. I’ve seen that jade 
here with the same story twice afore.’’ 


two men standing in the passage. 


OF CHARLES READE. 


Staines reached home more discom- 
posed than he could have himself be- 
lieved. The reason was that barefaced 
Injustice in a court of justice shook his 
whole faith in man. He opened the 
street-door with his latch-key, and found 
He 
inquired what they wanted. 

‘Well, sir,’’ said one of them civilly 
enough, ‘‘ we only want our due.’’ 

SH Or wierd 

‘For goods delivered at this house, 
sir. Balance ‘of “account: "And she 
handed him a butcher’s bill, £88 lls. 
5 1-2d. 

“You must be mistaken; we run no 
bills here. We pay ready money for 
everything.” 

“Well, sir,’’ said the butcher, ‘‘ there 
have been payments; but the balance 
has always been gaining; and we have 
been put off so often, we determined to 
see the master. Show you the books, 
sir, and welcome.”’ 

‘This instant, if you please.” He 
took the butcher’s address, who then 
retired, and the other tradesman, a 
grocer, told him a similar tale; balance, 
sixty pounds odd. 

He went to the butcher’s, sick at heart, 
inspected the books, and saw that, right 
or wrong, they were incontrovertible ; 
that debt had been gaining slowly but 
surely almost from the time he confided 
the accounts to his wife. She kept faith 
with him about five weeks, no more. 

The grocer’s books told a similar tale. 

The debtor put his hand to his heart, 
and stood a moment. The very grocer 
pitied him, and said, ‘‘ There’s no hurry, 
doctor; a trifle on account, if settlement 
in full is not convenient just now. I see 
you have been kept in the dark.’’ 

‘No, no,’’ said Christopher ; “ I’ll pay 
every Shilling.”’ He gave one gulp, and 
hurried away. 

At the fishmonger’s the same story, 
only for a smaller amount. 

A bill of nineteen pounds at the very 
pastry-cook’s ; a place she had promised 
him, as her physician, never to enter. 

At the draper’s, thirty-seven pounds 
odd. 


ie 


uli) 


"2 


ri 


YUNG 
y hy 
Uf 
Mn; 4 


SI 


\ AN aa 

1 Wii 
<High 
caariuint 


\yr 
wy 
i 


‘“WHERE TO?” SAID STAINES, AVERTING HIS HEAD. 
—A Simpleton, Chapter XI. 


READE, Volume Eight, 


A SIMPLETON. 


In short, wherever she had dealt, the 
same system—partial payments, and ever- 
growing debt. 

Remembering Madame Cie, he drove in 
a cab to Regent Street, and asked for 
Mrs. Staines’s account, 

‘* Shall I send it, sir? ”’ 

‘‘No: I will take it with me.”’ 

‘Miss Edwards, make out 
Staines’s account, if you please.”’ 

Miss Edwards was a good while mak- 
ing it out; but it was ready at last. He 
thrust it into his pocket, without daring 
to look at it then; but he went into Ver- 
rey’s, asked for a cup of coffee, and then 
perused the document. 


Mrs. 


Mrs. Dr. STAINES, 
To MADAME CIE, Dr. 


=e ERR 

To 1 black silk costume. . . . Wi oy Gl) O 
To 1 costume of reseda fallie, itn onan 

mere polonaise. 20 10 0 


To 1 bonnet of pink elven nile Salis 5 5 6 
To making trained dress of blue gros 
SPAN ae a) oy) 6 Se Oe O 
To 12 yards of gros grain i toe aon with 
trimmingss |e os)) Reg ahr k ee on 82, 
To draping lace raw: 
To 1 Sicilenne Dolman. 
To 1 round hat of fallie and ane 
To 1 cashmere morning dress. 
To 2 camisoles. . 
To 1 crinoline bustle. . 


me CW CO H CO 
(art CP EK=) Maa Sse a tee! 
nh (ar) en) (seer ies) as} 


Total. 99 8 6 


He went home, and into his studio, and 
sat down on his hard beech chair; he 
looked round on his books and his work, 
and then, for the first time, remembered 
how long and how patiently he had toiled 
for every hundred pounds he had made; 
and he laid the evidences of his wife’s 
profusion and deceit by the side of those 
signs of painful industry and self-denial, 
and his soul filled with bitterness. ‘‘ De- 
ceit ! Deceit ! ”’ 

Mrs. Staines heard he was in the house 
and came to know about the trial. She 
came hurriedly in, and caught him with 
his head on the table, in an attitude of 
prostration, quite new to him; he raised 
his head directly he heard her, and re- 
vealed a face pale, stern, and wretched. 


289 


‘Oh! what is the matter now ?”’ said 
she. 

‘‘The matter is what it has always 
been, if I could only have seen it. You 
have deceived me, and disgraced yourself. 
Look at those bills.”’ 

‘What bills ?—oh ! ” 

‘You have had an allowance for house- 
keeping.”’ 

‘‘Tt wasn’t enough.”’ 

‘It was plenty, if you had kept faith 
with me, and paid ready money. It was 
enough for the first five weeks. I am 
housekeeper now, and I shall allow my- 
self two pounds a week less, and not owe 
a shilling, either.’’ 

‘© Well, all I know is, I couldn’t do it; 
no woman could.”’ 

“Then you should have come to me 
and said so; and I should have shown 
you how. Was I in Egypt, or at the 
North Pole, that you could not find me, 
and treat me like a friend? You have 
ruined us; these debts will sweep away 
the last shilling of our little capital; but 
it isn’t that, oh, no! it is the miserable 
deceit.’’ 

Rosa’s eye caught the sum total of 
Madame Cie’s bill, and she turned pale. 
‘¢ Qh, what a cheat that woman is! ”’ 

But she turned paler when Christopher 
said, ‘‘ That is the one honest bill, for f 
gave you leave. It is these that part us; 
these; these. Look at them, false heart ! 
There, go and pack up your things. We 
can live here no longer ; we are ruined. IL 
must send you back to your father.”’ 

‘‘T thought you would, sooner or later,”’ 
said Mrs. Staines, panting, trembling, but 
showing a little fight. ‘‘He told you I 
wasn’t fit to be a poor man’s wife.”’ 

‘An honest man’s wife, you mean: 
that is what you are not fit for. You 
shall go home to your father, and I shall 
go into some humble lodging to work for 
you. Ill contrive to keep you and find 
you a hundred a year to spend in dress— 
the only thing your heart can really love. 
But I won’t have an enemy here in dis- 
guise of a friend; and I won’t have a 
wife about me I must treat like a ser- 
vant and watch like a traitor.’’ 


The words were harsh, but the agony 
a 1 O READE—VOL, VIII. 


290 WORKS 
with which they were spoken distinguished 
them from vulgar vituperation. 

They overpowered poor Rosa: she had 
been ailing a little for some time; and 
from remorse and terror, coupled with 
other causes, nature gave way. Her 
lips turned white, she gasped inarticu- 
lately, and with a little piteous moan, 
tottered, and swooned dead away. 

He was walking wildly about, ready to 
tear his hair, when she tottered; he saw 
her just in time to save her, and laid her 
gently on the floor and kneeled over her. 

Away went anger and every other feel- 
ing but love and pity for the poor weak 
creature, that, with all her faults, was 
so lovable and so loved. He applied no 
remedies at first; he knew they were use- 
less and unnecessary; he laid her head 
quite low, and opened door and window, 
and loosened all her dress, sighing deeply 
all the time at her condition. 

While he was thus employed, suddenly 
a strange cry broke from him; a cry of 
horror, remorse, joy, tenderness, all com- 
bined ; a cry compared with which lan- 
guage is inarticulate. His swift and 
practical eye had made a discovery. 

He kneeled over her, with his eyes di- 
lating and his hands clasped—a picture 
of love and tender remorse. 

She stirred. 

Then he made haste and applied his 
remedies, and brought her slowly back 
to life: he lifted her up and carried her 
, eK 
in his arms quite away from the bills 
and things, that when she came to she 
might see nothing to revive her distress. 
He carried her to the drawing-room, and 
kneeled down, and rocked her in his 
arms, and pressed her again and again 
gently to his heart, and cried over her. 
““Oh, my dove, my dove! the tender 
creature God gave me to love and cher- 
ish, and I have used it harshly? If I 
had only known! if I had only known !”’ 

While he was thus bemoaning her, and 
blaming himself, and crying over her like 
the rain—he, whom she had never seen 
shed a tear before in all his troubles— 
she was coming to entirely, and her 
quick ears caught his words, and she 
opened her lovely eyes upon him. 


OF CHARLES READE. 


‘*T forgive you, dear,’’ she said feebly. 
‘‘Bur | HOPE YOU WILL BE A KINDER 
FATHER THAN A HUSBAND.”’ 

These quiet words, spoken with rare 
gravity and softness, went through the 
great heart like a knife. 

He gave a sort of shiver, but said not a 
word. 

But that night he made a solemn vow 
to God that no harsh word from his lips 
should ever again strike a being so weak, 
so loving, and so beyond his comprehen- 
sion. Why look for courage and candor 
in a creature so timid and shy she could 
not even tell her husband that until, with 
her subtle sense, she saw he had discoyv- 
ered it? 


CHAPTER XI. 


To be a father; to have an image of his 
darling Rosa and a fruit of their love to 
live and work for: this gave the sore 
heart a heavenly glow, and elasticity to 
bear. Should this dear object be born 
to an inheritance of debt, of poverty? 
Never. 

He began to act as if he was even 
now a father. He entreated Rosa not 
to trouble or vex herself; he would look 
into their finances, and set all straight. 

He paid all the bills, and put by a quar- 
ter’s rent and taxes. Then there re- 
mained of his little capital just £10. 

He went to his printers, and had a 
thousand order-checks printed. These 
forms ran thus: 

‘‘Dr. Staines, of 13 Dear Street, May- 
fair (blank for date), orders of (blank here 
for tradesman and goods ordered), for 
cash. Received same time (blank for 
tradesman’s receipt). Notice. — Dr. 
Staines disowns all orders not printed 
on this form, and paid for at date of 
order.”’ | | 

He exhibited these forms, and warned — 
all the tradespeople before a witness 
whom he took round for that purpose. 


A SIMPLETON. 


He paid off Pearman on the spot. 
Pearman had met Clara, dressed like a 
pauper, her soldier having emptied her 
box to the very dregs; and he now of- 
fered to stay, but it was too late. 

Staines told the cook Mrs. Staines was 
in delicate health, and must not be 
troubled with anything. She must come 
to him for all orders. 

“Yes, sir,’’? said she. But she no 
sooner comprehended the check system 
fully than she gave warning. It put a 
stop to her wholesale pilfering. Her 
cooks had made full £100 out of Rosa 
among them since she began to keep 
accounts. 

Under the male housekeeper every 
article was weighed on delivery; and 
this soon revealed that the butcher and 
the fishmonger had habitually delivered 
short weight from the first, besides put- 
ting down the same thing twice. The 
things were sent back that moment, 
with a printed form, stating the nature 
and extent of the fraud. 

The washer-woman, who had been pil- 
fering wholesale so long as Mrs. Staines 
and her sloppy-headed maids had counted 
the linen, and then forgot it, was brought 
up with a run, by triplicate forms, and 
by Staines counting the things before 
two witnesses, and compelling the wash- 
er-woman to count them as well, and 
verify or dispute on the spot. The 
laundress gave warning—a plain confes- 
sion that stealing had been a part of her 
trade. 

He kept the house well for £3 a week, 
exclusive of coals, candles, and wine. 
His wife had had £5, and whatever she 
asked for dinner parties, yet found it not 
half enough upon her method. 

He kept no coachman. If he visited a 
patient, a man inthe yard drove him at 
a shilling per hour. 

By these means, and by working like a 
galley-slave, he dragged his expenditure 
down almost to a level with his income. 

Rosa was quite content at first, and 
thought herself lucky to escape re- 
proaches on such easy terms. 

But by and by so rigorous a system 
began to gall her. One day she fancied 


291 


a Bath bun; sent the new maid to the 
pastry-cook’s. Pastry-cook asked to see 
the doctor’s order. Maid could not show 
it, and came back bunless. 

Rosa came into the study to complain 
to her husband. 

‘*A Bath bun,’’ said Staines. ‘*‘ Why, 
they are colored with annatto, to save an 
and annatto is adulterated with 
Adultera- 


ess, 
chromates that are poison. 
tion upon adulteration. V’ll make you 
a real Bath bun.’”’? Off coat, and into 
the kitchen, and made her three, pure, 
but rather heavy. He brought them her 
in due course. She declined them lan- 
guidly. She was off the notion, as they 
say in Scotland. 

“Tf I can’t have a thing when I want 
it, I don’t care for it at all.’’ Such was 
the principle she laid down for his future 
guidance. 

He sighed, and went back to his work ; 
she cleared the plate. 

One day, when she asked for the 
carriage, he told her the time was now 
come for her to leave the carriage exer- 
cise. She must walk with him every day 
instead. 

‘¢But I don’t like walking.”’ 

“‘T am sorry for that. But it is nec- 
essary to you, and by and by your life 
may depend on it.”’ 

Quietly, but inexorably, he dragged 
her out walking every day. 

In one of those walks she stopped at a 
shop window, and fell in love with some 
baby’s things. ‘‘Oh! I must have that,’’ 
said she, ‘‘I must. I shall die if I don’t; 
you'll see now.”’ 

‘¢You shall,’? said he, ‘‘when I can 
pay for it,’’ and drew her away. 

The tears of disappointment stood in 
her eyes, and his heart yearned over her. 
But he kept his head. 

He changed the dinner-hour to six, and 
used to go out directly afterward. 

She began to complain of his leaving 
her alone like that. 

‘Well, but wait a bit,’’ said he; ‘‘sup- 
pose Lam making a little money by it, to 
buy you something you have set your 
heart on, poor darling! ”’ 

Ina very few days after this he brought 


292 


her a little box with aslitinit. Heshook 
it, and money rattled ; then he unlocked 
it, and poured out a little pile of silver. 
<‘There,’’ said he, “‘ put on your bonnet, 
and come and buy those things.’’ 

She put on her bonnet, and on the way 
she asked how it came to be all in silver. 

‘That is a puzzle,’’ said he, ‘‘ isn’tit ? ’’ 

“And how did you make it, dear; by 
writing ? ’’ 

ENOn ts 

‘‘ By fees from poor people? ”’ 

‘What, undersell my brethren! Hang 
it, no! My dear, I made it honestly, and 
some day I will tell you how I made it; 
at present, all I will tell you is this: I 
saw my darling longing for something 
she had a right to long for; I saw the 
tears in her sweet eyes, and—oh, come 
along, do! Iam wretched till I see you 
with the things in your hand.”’ 

They went to the shop ; and Staines sat 
and watched Rosa buying baby clothes. 
Oh! it was a pretty sight to see this mod- 
est young creature, little more than a 
child herself, anticipating maternity, but 
blushing every now and then, and looking 
aSkant at her lord and master. How his 
very bowels yearned over her ! 

And when they got home, she spread 
the things on the table, and they sat 
hand in hand, and looked at them, and 
she leaned her head on his shoulder and 
went quietly to sleep there. 

And yet, as time rolled on, she became 
irritable at times and impatient, and 
wanted all manner of things she could 
not have, and made him unhappy. 

Then he was out from six o’clock till 
one, and she took it into her head to be 


jealous. So many hours to spend away 
from her! Now that she wanted all his 
comfort. 


Presently Ellen, the new maid, got gos- 
siping in the yard, and a groom told her 
her master had a sweetheart on the sly, 
he thought; for he drove the brougham 
cut every evening himself; ‘‘and,’’ said 
the man, ‘‘he wears a mustache at 
night.”’ 

Ellen ran in, brimful of this, and told 
the cook; the cook told the washer- 
woman; the washer-woman told a dozen 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


families, till about two hundred people 
knew it. 

At last it came to Mrs. Staines in a 
roundabout way, at the very moment 
when she was complaining to Lady Cicely 
Treherne of her hard lot. She had been 
telling her she was nothing more than a 
lay figure in the house. 

‘“My husband is housekeeper now, and 
cook and all, and makes me delicious 
dishes, I can tell you; such curries! I 
couldn’t keep the house with five pounds 
a week, so now he does it with three ; and 
I never get the carriage, because walking 
is best for me; and he takes it out every 
night to make money. I don’t under- 
stand it.’’ 

Lady Cicely suggested that perhaps 
Dr. Staines thought it best for her to be 
relieved of all worry, and so undertook 
the housekeeping. 

‘No, no, no,’ said’ Rosas *siaisedmro 
pay them all a part of their bills, and 
then a little more, and so I kept get- 
ting deeper; and I was ashamed to tell 
Christie, so that he calls deceit ; and oh, 
he spoke to me so cruelly once! But he 
was very sorry afterward, poor dear! 
Why are girls brought up so silly? a 
piano, and no sense; and why are men 
sillier to go and marry such silly things? 
A wife! Iam not so much as a servant. 
Oh! Iam finely humiliated, and,’’ with a 
sudden hearty naiveté all her own, ‘it 
serves me just right.’’ 

While Lady Cicely was puzzling this 
out, in came a letter. Rosa opened it, 
read it, and gave a cry like a wounded 
deer. 

“Oh!” she cried, ‘‘ 1 am a miserable 
woman. What will become of me? ”’ 

The letter informed her bluntly that 
her husband drove his brougham out 
every night to pursue a criminal amour. 

While Rosa was wringing her hands in 
real anguish of heart, Lady Cicely read 
the letter carefully. 

‘‘T don’t believe this,”’ said she quietly. 

‘““Not true! Why, who would be so 
wicked as to stab a poor, inoffensive 
wretch like me if it wasn’t true? ”’ 

‘The first ugly woman would, in a 
minute. Don’t you see the writer can’t 


A SIMPLETON. 


tell you where he goes? Dwives his 
bougham out! That is all your infau- 
mant knows.”’ 

“Oh, my dear friend, bless you ! What 
have I been complaining to you about? 
All is light except to lose hislove. What 
shallI do? Iwill never tell him. I will 
never affront him by saying I suspected 
hing 

‘¢ Wosa, if you do that, you will always 
have a serpent gnawing you. No; you 
must put the letter quietly into his hand, 
and say, ‘Is there any twuth in that?’ ”’ 

“Oh, I could not! I haven’t the cour- 
age. If I do that, I shall know by his 
face is there any truth in it.”’ 

‘Well, and you must know the twuth. 
You shall know it. I want to know it 
too; for, if he does not love you twuly, I 
will nevaa twust myself to any thing so 
deceitful as a man.”’ 

Rosa, at last, consented to follow this 
advice. 

After dinner she put the letter into 
Christopher’s hand, and asked him quietly 
was there any truth in that: then her 
hands trembled, and her eyes drank 
him. 

Christopher read it, and frowned ; then 
he looked up, and said, ‘‘ No, not a word. 
What scoundrels there are in the world ! 
To go and tell you that, now! Why, you 
little goose, have you been silly enough 
to believe it?”’ 

““No,”’ said she irresolutely. ‘‘ But do 
you drive the brougham out every 
night ?’’ 

*‘ Except on Sunday.”’ 

jay here ? 77 

‘My dear wife, I never loved you as I 
love you now, and if it was not for you | 
should not drive the brougham out of 
nights. That is all I shall tell you at 
present ; but some day I’ll tell you all 
about it.’’ 

He took such a calm high hand with 
her about it that she submitted to leave 
it there; but from this moment the ser- 
pent doubt nibbled her. 

It had one curious effect, though. She 
left off complaining of trifies. 

Now, it happened one night that Lady 
Cicely Treherne and a friend were at a 


293 


concert in Hanover Square. The other 
lady felt rather faint, and Lady Cicely 
offered to take her home. The carriage 
had not yet arrived, and Miss Macnamara 
said to walk a few steps would do her 
good. A smart cabman saw them from 
a distance, and drove up, and, touching 
his hat, said, ‘“‘ Cab, ladies ? ”’ 

It seemed a very superior cab, and Miss 
Macnamara said, ‘‘ Yes,’’ directly. 

The cabman bustled down and opened 
the door; Miss Macnamara got in first, 
then Lady Cicely; her eye fell on the 
cabman’s face, which was lighted full by 
a street lamp, and it was Christopher 
Staines ! 

He started and winced, but the woman 
of the world never moved a muscle. 

“Where to?’ said Staines, averting 
his head. 

She told him where, and, when they got 
out, said, ‘“‘I’ll send it you by the ser- 
Vall bea 

A flunky soon after appeared with half 
a crown, and the amateur coachman 
drove away. Hesaid to himself, ‘‘ Come, 
my mustache is a better disguise than I 
thought.”’ 

Next day, and the day after, he asked 
Rosa, with affected carelessness, had she 
heard anything of Lady Cicely. 

““No, dear: but I dare say she will call 
this afternoon; it is her day.”’ 

She did call at last, and, after a few 
words with Rosa, became a little rest- 
less, and asked if she might consult Dr. 
Staines. 

«‘ Certainly, dear; come to his studio.”’ 

““No; might I see him here ? ”’ 

‘Certainly.’? She rang the bell, and 
told the servant to ask Dr. Staines if he 
would be kind enough to step into the 
drawing-room. ' 

Dr. Staines came in, and bowed to Lady 
Cicely, and eyed her a little uncomfort- 
ably. 

She began, however, in a way that put 
him quite at his ease. ‘‘ You remember 
the advice you gave us about my little 
cousin T'adcastah.”’ 

‘Perfectly ; his life is very precarious ; 
he is bilious, consumptive, and, if not 
watched, will be epileptical; and he has 


294 WORKS 


a fond, weak mother, who will let him | 


kill himself.’’ 

‘Exactly : and you wecommended a 
sea-voyage, with a medical attendant to 
watch his diet, and contwol his habits. 
Well, she took other advice, and the 
youth is worse; so now she is fwightened, 
and a month ago she asked me to pwo- 
pose to you to sail about with Tadcastah ; 
and she offered me a thousand pounds a 
year. I put on my stiff look, and said, 
‘Countess, with every desiah to oblige 
you, I must decline to cawwy that offah 
to a man of genius, learning, and wepu- 
tation, who has the ball at his feet in 
London. ’ ’’ 

‘‘Lord forgive you! Lady Cicely.”’ 

‘*Lord bless her! for standing up for 
my Christie.”’ 

Lady Cicely continued: ‘‘ Now, this 
good lady, you must know, is not exactly 
one of us;: the late earl mawwied into 
cotton, or wool, or something. So she 
said, ‘Name your price for him.’ I 
shwugged my shoulders, smiled affably, 
and as affectedly as you like, and changed 
the subject. But since then things have 
happened. Iam afwaid it is my duty to 
make you the judge whether you choose 
to sail about with that little cub— Rosa, 
I can beat about the bush no longer. Is 
it a fit thing that a man of genius, at 
whose feet we ought all to be sitting with 
reverence, should drive a cab in the pub- 
lic streets? Yes, Rosa Staines, your 
husband drives his brougham out at 
night, not to visit any other lady, as 
that anonymous wretch told you, but 
to make a few miserable shillings for 
you.”’ 

SOM SuTISshie hs 

‘Tt is no use, Dr. Staines; I must and 
will tell her. My dear, he drove me three 
nights ago. He had a cabman’s badge 
on his poor arm. If you knew what I 
suffered in those five minutes! Indeed, 
it seems cruel to speak of it—but I could 
not keep it from Rosa, and the reason I 
muster courage to say it before you, sir, 
is because I know she has other friends 
who keep you out of their consultations ; 
and after all it is the world that ought to 
blush, and not you.”’ 


-agony. 


OF CHARLES READE. 


Her ladyship’s kindly bosom heaved, 
and she wanted to cry; so she took her 
handkerchief out of her pocket without 
the least hurry, and pressed it delicately 
to her eyes, and did cry quietly, but with- 
out any disguise, like a brave lady, who 
neither cried nor did anything else she 
was ashamed to be seen at. 

As for Rosa, she sat sobbing round 
Christopher’s neck, and kissed him with 
all her soul. 

‘‘ Dear me!” said Christopher. ‘You 
are both very kind. But, begging your 
pardon, it is ‘much ado about nothing.’ ”’ 

Lady Cicely took no notice of that ob- 
servation. ‘So, Rosa dear,’’ said she, 
‘‘T think you are the person to decide © 
whether he had not better sail about with 
that little cub, than— Oh!”’’ 

“‘T will settle that,’? said Staines. “I 
have one beloved creature to provide for. 
I may have another. I must make money. 
Turning a brougham into a cab, whatever 
you may think, is an honest way of mak- 
ing it, and I am not the first doctor who 
has coined his brougham at night. But, 
if there is a good deal of money to be 
made by sailing with Lord Tadcaster, of 
course I should prefer that to cab-driving, 
for I have never made above twelve shil- 
lings a night.”’ 

‘¢Oh! as to that, she shall give you | 
fifteen hundred a year.”’ 

‘‘Then I jump at it.”’ 

“What! and leave me/”’ 

“Yes, love: leave you—for your good; 
and only fora time. Lady Cicely, it isa 
noble offer. My darling Rosa will have 
every comfort—ay, every luxury, till I 
come home, and then we will start afresh, 
with a good balance, and with more ex- 
perience than we did first.’’ 

Lady Cicely gazed on him with wonder. 
She said, ‘‘Oh, what stout hearts men 
have! No, no; don’t let him go. See, 
he is acting. His great heart is torn with 
I will have no hand in parting 
man and wife—no, not for a day.”? And 
she hurried away in rare agitation. 


Rosa fell on her knees, and asked Chris- 
topher’s pardon for having’ been jealous ; 


and that day she was a flood of divine 


A SIMPLETON. 


tenderness. She repaid him richly for 
driving the cab. But she was unnatu- 
rally cool about Lady Cicely ; and the ex- 
quisite reason soon came out. ‘Oh, yes! 
She is very good, very kind; but it is not 
for me now! No, you shall not sail about 
with her cub of a cousin, and leave me at 
such a time.”’ 

Christopher groaned. 

‘‘Christie, you shall not see that lady 


again. She came here to partus. Shevs 
an love with you. Iwas blind not to see 
it before.”’ 


Next day, as Lady Cicely sat alone in 
the morning-room thinking over this very 
scene, a footman brought in a card and a 
note. ‘“‘Dr. Staines begs particularly to 
see Lady Cicely Treherne.’’ 

The lady’s pale cheek colored ; she stood 
irresolute a single moment. ‘‘I will see 
Dr. Staines,’ said she. 

Dr. Staines came in, looking pale and 
worn ; he had not slept a wink since she 
saw him last. 

She looked at him full, and divined this 
at a glance. She motioned him to a seat 
and sat down herself, with her white hand 
pressing her forehead, and her head turned 
a little away from him. 


CHAPTER XII. 


He told her he had come to thank her 
for her great kindness, and to accept the 
offer. 

She sighed. “I hoped it was to decline 
it. Think of the misery of separation, 
both to you and her.’’ 

‘It will be misery. But we are not 
happy as it is; and she cannot bear pov- 
erty. Nor is it fair she should, when I 
can give her every comfort by just play- 
ing the man fora year or two.’’ Hethen 
told Lady Cicely there were more reasons 
than he chose to mention: go he must 
and would; and he implored her not to 


295 


let the affair drop. In short, he was sad 
but resolved, and she found she must go 
on with it, or break faith with him. She 
took her desk, and wrote a letter conclud- 
ing the bargain for him. She stipulated 


for half the year’s fee in advance. She 
read Dr. Staines the letter. 
‘You area friend,’’ said he. ‘‘Ishould 


never have ventured on that: it will be a 
godsend to my poor Rosa. You will be 
kind to her when I am gone? ”’ 

“TT will.”’ 

‘So will Uncle Philip, I think. I will 
see him before 1 go, and shake hands. 
He has been a good friend to me; but he 
was too hard on her, and I could not 
stand that.’’ 

Then he thanked and blessed her again, 
with the tears in his eyes, and left her 
more disturbed and tearful than she had 
ever been since she grew to woman. ‘‘Oh, 
cruel Poverty!’’ she thought; ‘that 
such a man should be torn from his home, 
and thank me for doing it—all for a little 
money—and here are we poor common- 
place creatures rolling in it.’’ 

Staines hurried home and told his wife. 
She clung to him convulsively, and wept 
bitterly ; she made no direct attempt to 
shake his resolution: she saw by his iron 
look that she could only afflict, not turn 
him. 

Next day came Lady Cicely to see her, 
Lady Cicely was very uneasy in her mind, 
and wanted to know whether Rosa was 
reconciled to the separation. 

Rosa received her with a forced polite- 
ness and an icy coldness that petrified 
her. She could not stay long in face of 
such a reception. At parting, she said 
sadly, ‘‘ You look on me as an enemy.’’ 

“What else can you expect, when you 
part my husband and me?” said Rosa 
with quiet sternness. 

“*T meant well,’’ said Lady Cicely sor- 
rowfully; ‘‘ but I wish I had never inter- 
fered.”’ 

“‘So do 1;’’ and she began to cry. 

Lady Cicely made no answer. She 
went quietly away, hanging her head 
sadly. 

Rosa was unjust, but she was not rude 
nor vulgar; and Lady Cicely’s temper 


— 


296 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


was so well governed that it never blinded 
her heart. She withdrew, but without 
the least idea of quarreling with her 
afflicted friend, or abandoning her. She 
went quietly home, and wrote to Lady 
——, to say that she should be glad to re- 
ceive Dr. Staines’s advance as soon as 
convenient, since Mrs. Staines would have 
to make fresh arrangements and the 
money might be useful. 

The money was forthcoming directly. 
Lady Cicely brought it to Dear Street, 
and handed it to Dr. Staines. His eyes 
sparkled at the sight of it. 

‘Give my love to Rosa,’’ said she soft- 
ly, and cut her visit very short. 

Staines took the money to Rosa, and 
said, ‘‘See what our best friend has 
brought us. You shall have four hun- 
dred, and I hope after the bitter lessons 
you have had you will be able to do with 
it for some months. The two hundred I 
shall keep as a reserve fund for you to 
draw on.”’ 

‘No, no!’’ said Rosa. ‘‘I shall go 
and live with my father, and never spend 
a penny. Oh, Christie, if you knew how 
I hate myself for the folly that is parting 
us! Oh, why don’t they teach girls sense 
and money, instead of music and the 
globes ?”’ 

But Christopher opened a banking ac- 
count for her, and gave her a check-book, 
and entreated her to pay everything by 
check, and run no bills whatever; and 
she promised. He also advertised the 
Bijou, and put a billin the window: ‘‘ The 
lease of this house and furniture to be 
sold.”’ 

Rosa cried bitterly at the sight of it, 
thinking how high in hope they were 
when they had their first dinner there, 
and also when she went to the first sale 
to buy the furniture cheap. 

And now everything moved with terri- 
ble rapidity. The Amphitrite was to sail 
from Plymouth in five days, and mean- 
time there was so much to be done that 
the days seemed to gallop away. 

Dr. Staines forgot nothing. He made 
his will in duplicate, leaving all to his 
wife. He left one copy at Doctor’s Com- 
mons and another to his lawyer: invento- 


ried all his furniture and effects in dupli- 
cate, too: wrote to Uncle Philip, and then 
called on him to seek reconciliation. Un- 
fortunately, Dr. Philip was in Scotland. 
At last this sad pair went down to Ply- 
mouth together, there to meet Lord Tad- 
caster and go on board H. M. 8. Amphi- 
trite, lying at anchor at Hamoaze, under 
orders for the Australian station. 

They met at the inn, as appointed, and 
sent word of their arrival on board the 
frigate, asking to remain on shore till the 
last minute. 

Dr. Staines presented his patient to 
Rosa, and after a little while drew him 
apart and questioned him professionally. 
He then asked for a private room. Here 
he and Rosa really took leave: for what 
could the poor things say to each other 
ona crowded quay? He begged her for- 
giveness on his knees for having once 
spoken harshly to her; and she told him, 
with passionate sobs, he had never spoken 
harshly to her; her folly had parted 
them. 

Poor wretches! they clung to each 
other with a thousand vows of love and 
constancy. They were to pray for each 
other at the same hours; to think of some 
kind words or loving act at other stated 
hours; and so they tried to fight with 
their suffering minds against the cruel 
separation: and if either should die, the 
other was to live wedded to memory, and 
never listen to love from other lips; but 
no! God was pitiful; he would let them 
meet again ere long, to part no more. 


They rocked in each other’s arms; they — 


cried over each other—it was pitiful. 

At last the cruel summons came; they 
shuddered, as if it was their death-blow. 
Christopher, with a face of agony, was 
yet himself, and would have parted then : 
and so best. But Rosa could not. She 
would see the last of him, and became al- 
most wild and violent when he opposed. 

Then he let her come with him to Mil- 
bay Steps, but into the boat he would not 
let her step. 

The ship’s boat lay at the steps, manned 
by six sailors, all seated, with their oars 
tossed in two vertical rows. A smart 


-middy in charge conducted them, and 


A SIMPLETON. 


Dr. Staines and Lord Tadcaster got in, 
leaving Rosa, in charge of her maid, on 
the quay. 

‘Shove off ’’—‘*‘ Down ’’—*‘ Give way.”’ 

Each order was executed so swiftly and 
surely, that, in as many seconds, the boat 
was clear, the oars struck the water with 
a loud splash, and the husband was shot 
away like an arrow, and the wife’s de- 
spairing cry rang on the stony quay, as 
many a poor woman’s cry had rung be- 
fore. 

In half a minute the boat shot under 
the stern of the frigate. 

They were received on the quarter-deck 
by Capt. Hamilton. He introduced them 
to the officers—a torture to poor Staines, 
to have his mind taken for a single in- 
stant from his wife—the first lieutenant 
came aft and reported, ‘‘ Ready for mak- 
ing sail, sir.”’ 

Staines seized the excuse, rushed to the 
other side of the vessel, leaned over the 
taffrail, as if he would fly ashore, and 
stretched out his hands to his beloved 
Rosa; and she stretched out her hands 
to him. They were so near he could read 
the expression of her face. It was wild 
and troubled, as one who did not yet real- 
ize the terrible situation, but would not 
be long first. 

‘HANDS MAKE SAIL—WAY ALOFT— 
UP ANCHOR,” rang in Christopher’s ears 
as ifinadream. All his soul and senses 
were bent on that desolate young creat- 
ure. How young and amazed her lovely 
face! Yet this bewildered child was about 
to become a mother. Even a stranger’s 
heart might have yearned with pity for 
her: how much more her miserable hus- 
band’s ! 

The capstan was manned, and worked 
to a merry tune that struck chill to the 
bereaved ; yards were braced for casting, 
anchor hove, catted, and fished, sail was 
spread with amazing swiftness, the ship’s 
head dipped, and slowly and gracefully 
paid off toward the Breakwater, and she 
stood out to sea under swiftly swelling 
canvas and a light northwesterly breeze. 

Staines only felt the motion: his body 
was in the ship, his soul with his Rosa. 
He gazed, he strained his eyes to see her 


297 


eyes, aS the ship glided from England 
and her. While he was thus gazing and 
trembling all over, up came to him a 
smart second lieutenant, with a brilliant 
voice that struck him like a sword: 
‘‘*Captain’s orders to show you berths. 
Please choose for Lord Tadcaster and 
yourself.”’ 

The man’s wild answer made the young 
officer stare. ‘Oh, sir! not now—try 
and do my duty when I have quite lost 
her—my poor wife—a child—a mother— 
there — sir — on the steps — there !— 
there !”’ 

Now, this officer always went to sea 
singing ‘‘ Oh, be joyful!”’? But a strong 
man’s agony, who can make light of it? 
It was a revelation to him, but he took it 
quickly. The first thing he did, being a 
man of action, was to dash into his cabin, 
and come back with a short, powerful, 
double glass. ‘‘ There !’’ said he, roughly 
but kindly, and shoved it into Staines’s 
hand. He took it, stared at it stupidly, 
then used it, without a word of thanks, 
So Wrapped was he in his anguish. 

This glass prolonged the misery of that 
bitter hour. When Rosa could no longer 
tell her husband from another, she felt he 
was really gone, and she threw her hands 
aloft and clasped them above her head, 
with the wild abandon of a woman who 
could never again be a child; and Staines 
saw it, and a sharp sigh burst from him, 
and he saw her maid and others gather 
round her. He saw the poor young thing 
led away, with her head all down, as he 
had never seen her before, and supported 
to the inn; and then he saw her no 
more. 

His heart seemed to go out of his bosom 
in search of her, and leave nothing but a 
stone behind: he hung over the taffrail 
hike a dead thing. A steady footfall 
Slapped hisear. He raised his white face 
and filmy eyes, and saw Lieut. Fitzroy 
marching to and fro like a sentinel, keep- 
ing everybody away from the mourner, 
with the steady, resolute, business-like 
face of a man in whom sentiment is con- 
fined to action; its phrases and its flour- 
ishes being literally terra encognita to the 
honest fellow. 


298 


Staines staggered toward him, holding 
out both hands, and gasped out, “‘ God 
bless you! Hide me somewhere—must 
not be seen so—got duty to do-——Patient 
—can’t do it yet—one hour to draw my 
breath—oh, my God, my God !—one hour, 
sir. Then do my duty if I die—as you 
would.’’ 

Fitzroy tore him down into his own 
cabin, shut him in, and ran to the first 
lieutenant, with a tear in his eye. ‘‘ Can 
I have a sentry, sir?’’ 

“Sentry ? What for ?”’ 

“The doctor—awfully cut up at leav- 
ing his wife; got himin my cabin. Wants 
to have his cry to himself.’’ 

‘““Hancy a fellow crying at going to 
sea ! 7’ 

‘‘It is not that, sir; it is leaving his 
wife.’’ 

‘‘ Well, is he the only man on board 
has got a wife ? ”’ 

‘Why, no sir. It zs odd, now I think 
of it. Perhaps he has only got that 
one.’ 

“Curious creatures, landsmen,’’ said 
the first lieutenant. ‘‘ However, you can 
stick a marine there.’’ 

PTV as. (Sire 

“And I say, show the youngster the 
berths, and let him choose, as the doc- 
tor’s aground.’’ 

“Yes, sir? 

So Fitzroy planted his marine, and then 
went after Lord Tadcaster : he had drawn 
up alongside his cousin, Captain Hamil- 
ton. The captain, being an admirer of 
Lady Cicely, was mighty civil to his 
little lordship, and talked to him more 
than was his wont on the quarter-deck ; 
for though he had a good flow of conver- 
sation and dispensed with ceremony in 
his cabin, he was apt to be rather short 
on deck. However, he told little Tad- 
caster he was fortunate; they had a good 
start, and, if the wind held, might hope 
to be clear of the Channel in twenty-four 
hours. ‘* You will see Eddystone Light- 
house about four bells.’’ said he. 

‘* Shall we go out of sight altogether ? ’’ 
inquired his lordship. 

“¢Of course we shall, and the sooner the 
better.’’ He then explained to the novice 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


that the only danger to a good ship was 
from the land. 

While Tadcaster was digesting this 
paradox, Captain Hamilton proceeded to 
descant on the beauties of blue water, 
and its fine medicinal qualities, which, he 
said, were particularly suited to young 
gentlemen with bilious stomachs; but 
presently, catching sight of Lieut. Fitz- 
roy standing apart, but with the manner 
of a lieutenant not there by accident, he 
stopped, and said, civilly but sharply, 
CoWell isin)’ 

Fitzroy came forward directly, saluted, 
and said he had orders from the first lieu- 
tenant to show Lord Tadcaster the berths. 
‘His lordship must be good enough to 
choose, because the doctor—couldn’t.”’ 

‘¢ Why not?” 

‘* Brought to, sir—for the present—by— 
well, by grief.°? 

** Brought to by Grief! Who the deuce 
is Grief? No riddles on the quarter- 
deck, if you please, sir.”’ 

“Oh, no, sir! I assure you he is 
awfully cut up, and he is having his cry 
out in my cabin.’’ 

‘‘Having his cry out! 
LGrined 

‘Leaving his wife, sir.’’ 

“Qh! is that all?” 

“Well, 1 don’t wonder,” cried little 
Tadcaster, warmly. ‘‘She is, oh, so 
beautiful !’’ and a sudden blush over- 
spread his pasty cheeks. ‘‘ Why on earth 
didn’t we bring her along with us here ? ”’ 
said he, suddenly opening his eyes with 
astonishment at the childish omission. 

‘¢ Why, indeed ?’’ said the captain com- 
ically, and dived below, attended dy the 
well-disciplined laughter of Lieut. Fitz- 
roy, who was too good an officer not to 
be amused at his captain’s jokes. Havy- 
ing acquitted himself of that duty—and it 
is a very difficult one sometimes—he took 
Lord Tadcaster to the main deck, and 
showed him two comfortable sleeping- 
berths that had been screened off for him 
and Dr. Staines. One of these was. 
fitted with a standing bedplace, the 
other had a cot swung init. Fitzroy 
offered him the choice, but hinted that he 
himself preferred a cot. 


why, what 


A SIMPLETON. 


‘© No, thank you,’’ says my lord mighty 
dryly. 

All right,’? said Fitzroy cheerfully. 
‘*'Take the other, then, my lord.’’ 

His little lordship cocked his eye like a 
jackdaw, and looked almost as cunning. 
‘* You see,’’ said he, ‘‘ I have been reading 
up for this voyage.”’ 

‘*Oh, indeed! Logarithms ?”’ 

‘‘Of course not.” 

‘* What then ? ”’ 

“Why Peter Simple, to be sure.’ 

“Ah, ha!’’ said Fitzroy, with a chuckle 
that showed plainly he had some deli- 
cious reminiscences of youthful study in 
the same quarter. 

The little lord chuckled, too, and put 
one finger on Fitzroy’s shoulder, and 
pointed at the cot with another. ‘‘ Tum- 
ble out the other side, you know—slippery 
hitches—cords cut—down you come flop 
in the middle of the night.’ 

Fitzroy’s eyes flashed merriment, but 
only fora moment. His countenance fell 
the next. ‘‘Lord bless you!’’ said he 
sorrowfully, “all that game is over now. 
Her majesty’s ship !—it is a church afloat. 
The service is going to the devil, as the 
old fogies say.”’ 

«« Ain’t you sorry ?’’ said the little lord, 
cocking his eye again just lke the bird 
hereinbefore mentioned. 

‘¢ Of course I am.”’ 

‘Then I’ll take the standing bed.’’ 

“ Allright. Isay, you don’t mind the 
doctor coming down with a run, eh ?”’ 

‘«‘He is not ill—I am. He is paid to 
take care of me—I am not paid to take care 
of him,’’ said the young lord sententiously. 

“‘T understand,’ replied Fitzroy dryly. 
‘Well, every one for himself, and Provi- 
dence for us all, as the elephant said when 
he danced among the chickens.”’ 

Here my lord was summoned to dinner 
with the captain. Staines was not there, 
but he had not forgotten his duty. In the 
midst of his grief he had written a note to 
the captain, hoping that a bereaved hus- 
band might not seem to desert his post if 
he hid for a few hours the sorrow he felt 
himself unable to control. Meantime he 
would be grateful if Capt. Hamilton would 
give orders that Lord Tadcaster should 


299 


eat no pastry, and drink only six ounces of 
claret, otherwise he should feel that he 
was indeed betraying his trust. 

The captain was pleased and touched 
with this letter. It recalled to him how 
his mother sobbed when she launched her 
little middy, swelling with his first cocked 
hat and dirk. 

There was champagne at dinner, and 
little Tadcaster began to pour out a tum- 
bler. ‘‘ Hold on!’’ said Capt. Hamilton. 
“You are not to drink that;’’ and he 
quietly removed the tumbler. ‘‘ Bring him 
Six ounces of claret.”’ 

While they were weighing the claret 
with scientific precision, Tadcaster remon- 
strated; and being told it was the doc- 
tor’s order, he squeaked out, ‘‘ Confound 
him! why did he not stay with his wife ? 
She is beautiful.’’ Nor did he give it up 
without a struggle. ‘‘ Here’s hospi- 
tality! ’? said he. ‘‘Six ounces.’’ 

Receiving no reply, he inquired of the 
third leutenant, which was generally 
considered the greatest authority in a 
ship—the captain or the doctor ? 

The third lieutenant answered not, but 
turned his head away, and, by violent 
exertion, succeeded in not splitting. 

“T’ll answer that,’’ said Hamilton po- 
litely. ‘The captain is the highest in his 
department, and the doctor in his. Now, 
Dr. Staines is strictly within his depart- 
ment, and will be supported by me and 
my officers. You are bilious and epilep- 
tical, and all the rest of it; and you are 
to be cured by diet and blue water.”’ 

Tadcaster was inclined to snivel. How- 
ever, he subdued that weakness with a 
visible effort, and in due course returned to 
the charge. ‘‘How would you look,”’ 
quavered he, ‘‘if there was to be a mu- 
tiny in this ship of yours, and I was to 
head it?” 

‘Well, I should look sharp—hang all 
the ringleaders at the yardarm, clap the 
rest under hatches, and steer for the near- 
est prison.”’ 

“Oh!” said Tadcaster, and digested 
this scheme a bit. At last he perked up 
again, and made his final hit. ‘“* Well, I 
shouldn’t care, for one, if you didn’t flog 
St 


300 


‘““In that case,’’ said Capt. Hamilton, 
“«1’d flog you—and stop your six ounces.”’ 

‘Then curse the sea; that is all I 
Say.’’ | 

“Why, you have not seen it; you have 
only seen the British Channel.’’ It was 
Mr. Fitzroy who contributed this last ob- 
servation. 

After dinner all but the captain went 
on deck, and saw the Eddystone light- 
house ahead and to leeward. They passed 
it. Fitzroy told his lordship its story, 
and that of its unfortunate predeces- 
sors. Soon after this Lord Tadcaster 
turned in. 

Presently the captain observed a change 
in the thermometer, which brought him 
on deck. He scanned the water and the 
sky ; and as these experienced command- 
ers have a Subtle insight into the weather, 
especially in familiar latitudes, he re- 
marked to the first lieutenant that it 
looked rather unsettled; and, as a mat- 
ter of prudence, ordered a reef in the 
topsails, and the royal yards to be sent 
down. Ship to be steered W. by S. This 
done, he turned in, but told them to call 
him if there was any change in the 
weather. 

During the night the wind gradually 
headed ; and at four bells in the middle 
watch, a heavy squall came up from the 
southwest. 

This brought the captain on deck again ; 
he found the officer of the watch at his 
post, and at work. Sail was shortened, 
and the ship made snug for heavy 
weather. 

At 4 A.M. it was blowing hard, and, 
being too near the French coast, they 
wore the ship. 

Now, this operation was bad for little 
Tadcaster. While the vessel was on the 
starboard tack, the side kept him snug; 
but when they wore her, of course he had 
no lee board to keep him in. The ship 
gave a lee lurch, and shot him clean 
out of his bunk into the middle of the 
cabin. 

He shrieked and shrieked, with terror 
and pain, till the captain and Staines, 
who were his nearest neighbors, came to 
him, and they gave him a little brandy, 


WORKS OF CHARLES 


READE. 


and got him to bed again. Here he suf- | 
fered nothing but violent sea-sickness for 
some hours. 

As for Staines, he had been swinging 
heavily in his cot; but such was his men- 
tal distress that he would have welcomed 
Sea-sickness, or any reasonable bodily suf- 
fering. He was in that state when the 
sting of a wasp is a touch of comfort. 

Worn out with sickness, Tadcaster 
would not move. Invited to breakfast, 
he swore faintly, and insisted on dying in 
peace. At last exhaustion gave him a 
sort of sleep, in spite of the motion, which 
was violent, for it was now blowing great 
guns, a heavy sea on, and the great 
waves dirty in color and crested with 
raging foam. 

They had to wear ship again, always a 
ticklish maneuver in weather like this. 

A tremendous sea struck her quarter, 
stove in the very port abreast of which 
the little lord was lying, and washed him 
clean out of bed into the lee scuppers, and 
set all swimming round him. 

Didn’t he yell, and wash about the 
cabin, and grab at all the chairs and 
tables and things that drifted about, 
nimble as eels, avoiding his grasp! 

In rushed the captain, and in staggered 
Staines. They stopped his ‘‘ voyage au 
tour de sa chambre,’’ and dragged him 
into the after-saloon. 

He clung to them by turns, and begged, 
with many tears, to be put on the nearest 
land ; a rock would do. 

‘“* Much obliged,’’ said the captain; 
“‘now is the very time to give rocks a 
wide berth.’’ 

‘* A dead whale, then—a lighthouse— 
anything but a beast of a ship.”’ 

They pacified him with a little brandy, 
and for the next twenty-four hours he 
scarcely opened his mouth, except for a 
purpose it is needless to dwell on. We 
can trust to our terrestrial readers’ per- 
sonal reminiscences of lee lurches, weather 
rolls, and their faithful concomitant. 

At last they wriggled out of the chan- 
nel, and soon after the wind abated, and 
next day veered round to the northward, 
and the ship sailed almost on an even 
keel. The motion became as heavenly as 


A SIMPLETON. 


it had been diabolical, and the passengers 
came on deck. 

Staines had suffered one whole day from 
sea-sickness, but never complained. I be- 
lieve it did his mind more good than harm. 

As for Tadcaster, he continued to suf- 
fer, at intervals, for two days more; but, 
on the fifth day out, he appeared with a 
little pink tinge on his cheek, and a wolf- 
ish appetite. Dr. Staines controlled his 
diet severely as to quality and, when they 
had been at sea just eleven days, the phy- 
sician’s heavy heart was not a little light- 
ened by the marvelous change in him. 
The unthinking, who believe in the drug 
system, should have seen what a physi- 
cian can do with air and food, when cir- 
cumstances enable him to enforce the 
diet he enjoins. Money will sometimes 
buy even health, if you avozd drugs en- 
tirely, and go another road. 

Little Tadcaster went on board pasty, 
dim-eyed, and very subject to fits, be- 
cause his stomach was constantly over- 
loaded with indigestible trash, and the 
blood in his brain-vessels was always 
either galloping or creeping, under the 
first or second effect of stimulants admin- 
istered at first by thoughtless physicians. 
Behold him now—bronzed, pinky, bright- 
eyed, elastic ; and only one fit in twelve 
days. 

The quarter-deck was hailed from the 
“lookout ’’ with a cry that is sometimes 
terrible, but, in this latitude and weather, 
welcome and exciting. ‘‘ Land, ho!’ 

“«“ Where away?’’ cried the officer of 
the watch. 

‘** A point on the lee bow, sir.”’ 

It was the Island of Madeira: they 
dropped anchor in Funchal Roads, furled 
Sails, squared yards, and fired a salute 
of twenty-one guns for the Portuguese 
flag. 

They went ashore, and found a good 
hotel, and were no longer dosed, as in 
former days, with oil, onions, garlic, 
eggs. But the wine queer, and no Ma- 
deira to be got. 

Staines wrote home to his wife: he told 
her how deeply he had felt the bereave- 
ment, but did not dwell on that, his ob- 
ject being to cheer her. He told her it 


301 


promised to be a rapid and wonderful 
cure, and one that might very well give 
him a fresh start in London. They need 
not be parted a whole year, he thought. 
He sent her a very long letter, and also 
such extracts from his sea journal as he 
thought might please her. After dinner 
they inspected the town; and what struck 
them most was to find the streets paved 
with flag-stones, and most of the carts 
drawn by bullocks on sledges. A man 
every now and then would run forward 
and drop a greasy cloth in front of the 
sledge to lubricate the way. 

Next day, after breakfast, they ordered 
horses—these, on inspection, proved to be 
of excellent breed, either from Australia 
or America—very rough shod, for the 
stony road. Started for the Grand Canal 
—peeped down that mighty chasm, which 
has the appearance of an immense mass 
having been blown out of the center of 
the mountain. 

They lunched under the Great Dragon- 
Tree near its brink, then rode back, ad- 
miring the bold mountain scenery. Next 
morning, at dawn, rode on horses up the 
hill to the convent. Admired the beauti- 
ful gardens on the way. Remained a 
short time; then came down in the hand- 
sled —little baskets slung on sledges, 
guided by two natives ; these sledges run 
down hill with surprising rapidity, and 
the men guide them round corners by 
sticking out a foot to port or starboard. 

Embarked at 11.30 a. mM. 

At 1.30, the men having dined, the ship 
was got under way for the Cape of Good 
Hope, and all sail made for a southerly 
course, to get into the N.E. trades. 

The weather was now balmy and de- 
lightful, and so genial that everybody 
lived on deck, and could hardly be got 
to turn in to their cabins, even for sleep. 

Dr. Staines became a favorite with the 
officers. There isa great deal of science 
on board a modern ship of war; and of 
course, on some points, Staines, a Cam- 
bridge wrangler, and man of many 
sciences and books, was an oracle. On 
others he was quite behind, but a ready 
and quick pupil. He made up to the 
navigating officer, and learned, with his 


302 


help, to take observations. In return, he 
was always at any youngster’s service 
in a trigonometrical problem; and he 
amused the midshipmen and young lieu- 
tenants with analytical tests; some of 
these were applicable to certain liquids 
dispensed by the paymaster. Under one 
of them the port wine assumed some very 
droll colors, and appearances not proper 
to grape juice. 

One lovely night that the ship clove 
the dark sea into a blaze of phosphor- 
escence, and her wake streamed like a 
comet’s tail, a waggish middy got a 
bucketful hoisted on deck, and asked the 
doctor to analyze that. He did not much 
like it, but yielded to the general request ; 
and by dividing it into smaller vessels, 
and dropping in various chemicals, made 
rainbows and silvery flames and what not. 
But he declined to repeat the experiment : 
‘““No, no; once is philosophy; twice is 
cruelty. D’ve slain more than Samson 
already.’’ 

As for Tadcaster, science had no charms 
for him; but fiction had; and he got it 
galore; for he cruised about the fore- 
castle, and there the quartermasters and 
oldseamen spun him yarns that held him 
breathless. 

But one day my lord had a fit on the 
quarter-deck, and a bad one; and Staines 
found him smelling strong of rum. He 
represented this to Capt. Hamilton. The 
captain caused strict inquiries to be made: 
and it came out that my lord had gone 
among the men with money in both 
pockets, and bought a little of one man’s 
grog and alittle of another, and had been 
sipping the furtive but transient joys of 
solitary intoxication. 

Capt. Hamilton talked to him seriously ; 
told him it was suicide. 

‘* Never mind, old boy,”’ said the young 
monkey; ‘fa short life and a merry 
one.”’ 

Then Hamilton represented that it was 
very ungentlemanlike to go and tempt 
poor Jack with his money to offend dis- 
cipline and get flogged. ‘‘ How will you 
feel, Tadcaster, when you see their backs 
bleeding under the cat ? ”’ 

“Oh! d—n it all, George, don’t do 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


that,’? says the young gentleman, all in 
hurry. 

Then the commander saw _ he oe 
touched the right chord. So he playe 
on till he got Lord Tadcaster to pledge 
his honor not to doit again. 

The little fellow gave the pledge, but 
relieved his mind as follows: ‘“‘ But itis 
a cursed tyrannical hole, this tiresome 
old ship. You can’t do anything you like 
in it.”’ 

‘“Well, but no more you can in the 
grave; and that is the agreeable resi- 
dence you were hurrying to. but for this 
tiresome old ship.’’ 

‘‘Lord! no more you can,” said Tad- 
caster, with sudden candor. ‘‘I forgot 
that.”’ 

The airs were very light; ship hardly 
moved. It was beginning to get dull, 
when one day a sail was sighted on the 
weather bow, standing to the eastward. 
On nearing her, she was seen by the cut 
of her sails to be a man-of-war, evidently 
homeward bound ; so Capt. Hamilton or- 
dered the main-royal to be lowered (to 
render signal more visible) and the “ De- 
mand ’’ hoisted. No notice being taken 
of this, a gun was fired to draw her at- 
tention to the signal. This had the de- 
sired effect; down went her main-royal 
and up went her ‘‘ Number.”’ On refer- 
ring to the signal-book she proved to be 
the Vindictive, from the Pacific station. 

This being ascertained, Capt. Hamilton, 
being that captain’s senior, signaled, 
‘*Close, and prepare to receive letters: ”’ 
in obedience to this she bore up, ran down, 
and rounded to; the sail in Amphitrite 
was also shortened, the main top-sail laid 
to the mast, and a boat lowered. The 
captain having finished his dispatches, 
they, with the letter-bags, were handed 
into the boat, which shoved off, pulled to 
the lee side of the Vzndictive, and left 
the dispatches, with Capt. Hamilton’s 
compliments. On its return, both ships 
made sail on their respective course, ex- 
changing “ Bon voyage” by signal; and 
soon the upper sails of the homeward- 
bounder were seen dipping below the hori- 
zon: longing eyes followed her, on board 
the Amphitrite. 


A SIMPLETON. 


How many hurried missives had been 
written and dispatched in that hour! But 
as for Staines, he was a man of fore- 
thought, and had a volume ready for his 
dear wife. 

Lord Tadcaster wrote to Lady Cicely 
Treherne. His epistle, though brief, con- 
tzined a plum or two. 

He wrote: ‘‘ What with sailing, and 
fishing, and eating nothing but roast 
meat, [I’m quite another man.’’ 

This amused her ladyship a little, but 
not so much as the postscript, which was 
indeed the neatest thing in its way she 
had met with, and she had some experi- 
ence, too. 

‘“P.8.—I say, Cicely, I think I should 
like to marry you. Would you mind? ”’ 

Let us defy time and space to give you 
Lady Cicely’s reply: ‘‘I should enjoy it 
of all things, Taddy. But, alas! I am 
too young.”’ 

N.B.—She was twenty-seven, and Tad 
sixteen. Tio be sure, Tad was four feet 
eleven, and she was only five feet six and 
a half. 

To return to my narrative (with apolo- 
gies), this meeting of the vessels caused 
a very agreeable excitement that day; 
but a greater was in store. In the after- 
noon Tadcaster, Staines, and the principal 
officers of the ship, being at dinner in the 
captain’s cabin, in came the officer of the 
watch, and reported a large spar on 
the weather bow. 

“‘ Well, close it if you can; and let me 
know if it looks worth picking up.”’ 

He then explained to Lord Tadcaster, 
that, on a cruise, he never liked to 
pass a spar, or anything that might 
possibly reveal the fate of some vessel 
or other. 

In the middle of his discourse the officer 
came in again, but not in the same cool, 
business way: he ran in excitedly, and 
said, ‘‘ Captain, the signal-man reports it 
alive !”’ 

“* Alive ?—a spar! What do you mean? 
Something alive on it, eh ? ”’ 

‘*No, sir; alive itself.’’ 

‘* How can that be? Hail him again. 
Ask him what it is.”’ 

The officer went out, and hailed the 


“Well, this 7s new. 


303 
signal-man at the mast-head. ‘* What 
1a. 2 77 

‘‘Sea-sarpint, I think.’’ 

This hail reached the captain’s ears 
faintly. However, he waited quietly till 
the officer came in and reported it; then 
he burst out, ‘‘ Absurd !—there is no such 
creature in the universe. What do you 
say, Dr. Staines? It is in your depart- 
ment.”’ 

‘*The universe in my department, cap- 
tain ? ’’ 

‘‘Haw! haw! haw!’ went Fitzroy and 
two more. 

‘* No, you rogue, the serpent.’’ 

Dr. Staines, thus appealed to, asked 
the captain if he had ever seen small 
snakes out at sea. 

“Why, of course. Sailed through a 
mile of them once in the Archipelago.” 

‘‘ Sure they were snakes ?”’ 

‘‘ Quite sure: and the biggest was not 
eight feet long.’’ 

‘Very well, captain; then sea-ser- 
pents exist, and it becomes a mere ques- 
tion of size. Now, which produces the 
larger animals in every kind, land or 
sea? The grown elephant weighs, I be- 
lieve, about two tons. The very smallest 
of the whale tribe weighs ten; and they 
go as high as forty tons. There are 
smaller fish than the whale that are 
four times as heavy as the elephant. 

‘“Why doubt, then, that the sea can 
breed a snake to eclipse the boa-con- 
strictor? Even if the creature had never 
been seen, I should, by mere reasoning 
from analogy, expect the sea to produce 
a serpent excelling the boa-constrictor, 
as the lobster excels the cray-fish of our 
rivers. See how large things grow at 
sea! The salmon born in our rivers 
weighs in six months a quarter of a 
pound, or less; it goes out to sea, and 
comes back in one year weighing seven 
pounds. So far from doubting the large 
sea-serpents, I believe they exist by the 
million. The only thing that puzzles me 
is, why they should ever show a nose 
above water; they must be very numer- 
ous, I think.”’ 

Capt. Hamilton laughed, and _ said, 
Doctor, in comphi- 


304 


ment to your opinion, we will go on deck 
and inspect the reptile you think so com- 
mon.’ He stopped at the door, and 
said, ‘‘ Doctor, the salt-cellar is by you. 
Would you mind bringing it on deck? 
We shall want a little to secure the 
animal.”’ 

So they all went on deck right merrily. 

The captain went up a few ratlines in 
the mizzen rigging, and looked to wind- 
ward, laughing all the time; but all of a 
sudden there was a great change in his 
manner. 

‘Good heavens, it is alive—LUFF!’’ 

The helmsman obeyed ; the news spread 
like wildfire. Mess kids, grog kids, pipes, 
were all let fall, and soon three hundred 
sailors clustered on the rigging like bees, 
to view the long talked-of monster. 

It was soon discovered to be moving 
lazily along, the propelling part being 
under water, and about twenty-five feet 
visible. It had a small head for so large 
a body; and, as they got nearer, rough 
scales were seen, ending in smaller ones 
further down the body. It had a mane, 
but not like a lion’s, as some have pre- 
tended. If you have ever seen a pony 
with a hog-mane, that was more the 
character of this creature’s mane—if 
mane it was. 

They got within a hundred yards of it, 
and all saw it plainly, scarce believing 
their senses. 

When they could get no nearer for the 
wind, the captain yielded to that instinct 
which urges man always to kill a curi- 
osity, ‘‘to encourage the rest,’’ as saith 
witty Voltaire. ‘‘Get ready a gun. Best 
shot in the ship lay and fire it.’’ 

This was soon done. Bang went the 
gun; the shot struck the water close to 
the brute, and may have struck him un- 
der water, for aught I know. Anyway, 
it sorely disturbed him; for he reared 
into the air a column of serpent’s flesh 
that looked as thick as the main top- 
mast of a seventy-four, opened a mouth 
that looked capacious enough to swallow 
the largest bacoy anchor in the ship, and 
with a strange grating noise between a 
bark and a hiss, dived, and was seen no 
more. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


When he was gone they all looked at 
one another, like men awakening from)a 
dream. 

Staines alone took it quite coolly. It 
did not surprise him in the least. He had 
always thought it incredible that the boa- 
constrictor should be larger than any sea 
snake. That idea struck him as mon- 
strous and absurd. He noted the sea- 
serpent in his journal, but with this doubt}, 
‘‘Semble—more like a very large eel,”’ 

Next day they crossed the line. Just 
before noon a young gentleman burst into 
Staines’s cabin, apologizing for want of 
ceremony; but if Dr. Staines would like 
to see the line, it was now in sight from 
the mizzen-top. 

‘‘Glad of it, sir,’’ said Staines ; “‘ collect 
it for me in the ship’s buckets, if you 
please. I want to send a line to friends 
at home.’’ 

Young gentleman buried his hands 
in his pockets, walked out in solemn si- 
lence, and resumed his position on the lee 
side of the quarter-deck. 

Nevertheless, the opening, coupled with 
what he had heard and read, made Staines 
a little uneasy, and he went to his friend 
Fitzroy, and said : 

‘* Now look here; I am at the service of 
you experienced and humorous mariners. 
I plead guilty at once to the crime of never 
having passed the line; so make ready 
your swabs, and lather me; your ship’s 
scraper, and shave me; and let us get it 
over. But Lord Tadcaster is nervous, 
sensitive, prouder than he seems, and I’m 
not going to have him driven into a fit for 
all the Neptunes and Amphitrites in 
creation.”’ 

Fitzroy heard him out, then burst out 
laughing. ‘‘ Why, there is none of that 
game in the Royal Navy,” said he. 
«Hasn't been this twenty years.”’ 

‘17m 'so sorry !*’? said Dri Stamessas it 
there is a form of wit I revere, it is prac- 
tical joking.”’ 

‘‘Doctor, you are a Satirical beggar.”’ 

Staines told Tadcaster, and he went for- 
ward and chaffed his friend the quarter- 
master, who was one of the forecastle 
wits. “‘Isay, quartermaster, why doesn*t 
Neptune come on board ?”’ 


A SIMPLETON. 


Dead silence. 

‘*T wonder what has become of poor old 
Nep ?”’ 

‘“Gone ashore,’’ growled the seaman. 
‘* Last seen in the Ratcliff Highway. Got 
a shop there—lends a shilling in the pound 
on seamen’s advance tickets.”’ 

‘“¢Oh ! and Amphitrite ? ”’ 

‘‘Married the sexton at Wapping.”’ 

‘And the Nereids ? ”’ 

“‘Neruds !”’ (scratching his head) ‘I 
harn’t kept my eye on them small craft. 
But I believe they are selling oysters in 
the port of Leith.”’ 

A light breeze carried them across the 
equator ; but soon after they got becalmed, 
and it was dreary work, and the ship 
rolled, gently but continuously, and upset 
Lord Tadcaster’s stomach again, and 
quenched his manly spirit. 

At last they were fortunate enough to 
catch the §.E. trade, but it was so lan- 
guid at first that the ship barely moved 
through the water, though they set every 
stitch, and studding-sails alow and aloft, 
till really she was acres of canvas. 

While she was so creeping along, a man 
in the mizzen-top noticed an enormous 
shark gliding steadily in her wake. This 
may seem a small incident, yet it ran 
through the ship like wildfire, and caused 
more or less uneasiness in three hundred 
stout hearts: so near is every seaman to 
death, and so strong the persuasion in 
their superstitious minds, that a shark 
does not follow a ship pertinaciously with- 
out a prophetic instinct of calamity. 

Unfortunately, the quartermaster con- 
veyed this idea to Lord Tadcaster, and 
confirmed it by numerous examples, to 
prove that there was death at hand when 
a shark followed the ship. 

Thereupon Tadcaster took it into his 
head that he was under a relapse, and 
the shark was waiting for his dead body. 
He got quite low-spirited. Staines told 
TVitzroy. Fitzroy then said, “‘ Shark, be 


hanged! IJ’ll have him on deck in half 
an hour.”’ He got leave from the cap- 
tain. A hook was baited with a large 


piece of pork, and towed astern by a stout 
line, experienced old hands attending to 
it by turns. 


305 


The shark came up leisurely, surveyed 
the bait, and, I apprehend, ascertained 
the position of the hook: at all events, 
he turned quietly on his back, sucked the 
bait off, and retired to enjoy it. 

Every officer in the ship tried him in 
turn, but without success; for if they got 
ready for him, and the moment he took 
the bait jerked the rope hard, in that case 
he opened his enormous mouth so wide 
that the bait and hook came out clear. 
But sooner or later, he always got the 
bait, and left his captors the hook. 

This went on for days, and his huge 
doasal fin always in the ship’s wake. 

Then Tadcaster, who had watched these 
experiments with hope, lost his spirit and 
his appetite. 

Staines reasoned with him, but in vain. 
Somebody was to die; and although there 
were three hundred and more in the ship, 
he must be the one. At last he actually 
made his will, and threw himself into 
Staines’s arms, and gave him messages to 
his mother and Lady Cicely, and ended 
by frightening himself into a fit. 

This roused Staines’s pity, and also put 
him on his mettle. What, science be 
beaten by a shark! 

He pondered the matter with all his 
might, and at last an idea came to him. 

He asked the captain’s permission to 
try hishand. This was accorded immedi- 
ately, and the ship’s stores placed at his 
disposal very politely, and with a sly, 
comical grin. 

Dr. Staines got from the carpenter 
some sheets of zinc and spare copper and 
some flannel. These he cut into three-inch 
squares, and soaked the flannel in acidu- 
lated water. He then procured a quantity 
of bell-wire, the greater part of which he 
insulated by wrapping it round with hot 
gutta-percha. So eager was he that he 
did not turn in all night. 

In the morning he prepared what he 
called an electric fuse. He filled a soda- 
water bottle with gunpowder, attaching 
some cork to make it buoyant, put in the 
fuse and bung, made it water-tight, con- 
nected and insulated his main wires, en- 
veloped the bottle in pork, tied a line to 


‘it and let the bottle overboard. 


306 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


The captain and officers shook their | Tadcaster’s urgent request, and then the 


heads mysteriously. The tars peeped 
and grinned from every rope to see a doc- 
tor try and catch a shark with a soda- 
water bottle and no hook; but somehow 
the doctor seemed to know what he was 
about, so they. hovered around and waited 
the result, mystified but curious, and show- 
ing their teeth from ear to ear. 

“The only thing I fear,’’ said Staines, 
“is that the moment he takes the bait, 
he will cut the wire before I can complete 
the circuit and fire the fuse.”’ 

Nevertheless, there was another objec- 
tion to the success of the experiment. 
The shark had disappeared. 

“ Well,’”? said the captain, ‘at all 
events, you have frightened him away.”’ 

«“No,’’ said little Tadcaster, white as a 
ghost: ‘‘he is only under water, I know ; 
waiting—waiting.”’ 

‘There he is!’’ cried one in the rat- 
lines. 

There was a rush to the taffrail—great 
excitement. 

‘Keep clear of me,’’ said Staines, quiet- 
ly but firmly. ‘‘It can only be done at 
the moment before he cuts the wire.”’ 

The old shark swam slowly round the 
bait. 

He saw it was something new. 

He swam round and round it. 

‘“*He won’t take it,’’ said one. 

‘He suspects something.”’ 

“Oh, yes! he will take the meat some- 
how, and leave the pepper. Sly old fox !’’ 

‘He has eaten many a poor Jack, that 
one.”’ 

The shark turned slowly.on his back, 
and, instead of grabbing the bait, seemed 
to draw it by gentle suction into that ca- 
pacious throat, ready to blow it out in a 
moment if it was not all right. 

The moment the bait was drawn out of 
sight, Staines completed the circuit: the 
bottle exploded with a fury that surprised 
him and everybody who saw it; a ton of 
water flew into the air, and came down in 
spray, and a gory carcass floated belly up- 
permost, visibly staining the blue water. 

There was a roar of amazement and ap- 
plause. 

The carcass was towed alongside, at 


power of the explosion was seen. Con- 
fined, first by the bottle, then by the meat, 
then by the fish, and lastly by the water, 
it had exploded with tenfold power, had | 
blown the brute’s head into a million at- | 
oms, and had even torn a great furrow in | 
its carcass, exposing three feet of the 
backbone. 

Taddy gloated on his enemy, and began 
to pick up again from that hour. 


The wind improved, and, as usual in 
that latitude, scarcely varied a point. 
They had a pleasant time. Private the- 
atricals, and other amusements, till they 
got to latitude 26°S., and longitude 27°. 
Then the trade-wind deserted them. 
Light and variable winds succeeded. 

The master complained of the chro- 
nometers, and the captain thought it his 
duty to verify or correct them: and so 
shape his course for the island of Tristan 
d’Acunha, then lying a little way out of 
his course. I ought, perhaps, to explain to 
the general reader that the exact position 
of this island, being long ago recorded, it 
was an infallible guide to go by in verify- 
ing a ship’s chronometers. 

Next day the glass fell all day, and the 
captain said he should double reef-top- 
sails at nightfall, for something was brew- 
ing. 

The weather, however, was fine, and 
the ship was sailing very fast, when, 
about half an hour before sunset, the 
masthead man hailed that there was a 
balk of timber in sight, broad on the 
weather-bow. 

The signal-man was sent up, and said it 
looked like a raft. 

The captain, who was on deck, leveled 
his glass at it, and made it out a raft, 
with a sort of rail to it, and the stump of 
a mast. 

He ordered the officer of the watch to 
keep the ship as close to the wind as pos- 
sible. He should like to examine it if he 
could. 

The master represented respectfully 
that it would be unadvisable to beat to 
windward forthat. ‘‘I have no faith in 
our chronometers, sir, and it is important 


A SIMPLETON. 


to make the island before dark: fogs rise 
here so suddenly.”’ 

‘Very well, Mr. Bolt: then I suppose 
we must let the raft go.’’ 

‘““ MAN ON THE RAFT TO WINDWARD !”’ 
hailed the signal-man. 

This electrified the ship. The captain 
ran up the mizzen rigging and scanned the 
raft, now nearly abeam. 

‘Sltv7s' a man!’ he’ cried, and ‘was 
about to alter the ship’s course, when, at 
that moment the signal-man hailed again : 

‘IT IS A CORPSE.”’ 

“* How d’ye know ?”’ 

‘ By the gulls.”’ 

Then succeeded an exciting dialogue be- 
tween the captain and the master, who, 
being in his department, was very firm ; 
and went so far as to say he would not 
answer for the safety of the ship if they 
did not sight the land before dark. 

The captain said, “ Very well,’’? and 
took a turn or two. But at last he said, 
“No. Her Majesty’s ship must not pass 
a raft with a man on it, dead or alive.’’ 

He then began to give the necessary 
orders, but before they were out of his 
mouth a fatal interruption occurred. 

Tadcaster ran into Dr. Staines’s cabin, 
crying, ‘‘ A raft with a corpse close by !”’ 

Staines sprang to the quarter-port to 
see; and, craning eagerly out, the lower 
port-chain, which had not been well se- 
cured, slipped, the port gave way, and, as 
his whole weight rested on it, canted him 
headlong into the sea. 

A smart seaman in the fore-chains saw 
the accident, and instantly roared out, 
‘*MAN OVERBOARD!” acry that sends.a 
thrill through a ship’s very ribs. 

Another smart fellow cut the life-buoy 
adrift so quickly that it struck the water 
within ten yards of Staines. 

The officer of the watch, without the 
interval of half a minute, gave the right 
orders in the voice of a Stentor: 

‘* Let go life-buoy. 

‘‘Lifeboat’s crew away. 

‘*Hands shorten sail. 

«¢Mainsail up. 

‘‘ Main-topsail to mast.’’ 

These orders were executed with admi- 
rable swiftness. Meantime there was a 


B07 


mighty rush of feet throughout the frig- 
ate, every hatchway was crammed with 
men eager to force their way on deck. 

In five seconds the middy of the watch 
and half her crew were in the lee cutter 
fitted with Clifford’s apparatus. 

‘Lower away !’’ cried the excited of- 
ficer ; ‘‘ the others will come down by the 
pendants.’’ 

The man stationed, sitting on the bot- 
tom boards, eased away roundly, when 
suddenly there was a hitch—the boat 
would go no further. 

‘* Lower away there in the cutter! Why 
don’t you lower ?’’ screamed the captain, 
who had come over to leeward expecting 
to see the boat in the water. 

**The rope has swollen, sir, and pend- 
ants won’t unreeve,’’ cried the middy in 
agony. 

“Volunteers for the weather-boat !”’ 
shouted the first lieutenant ; but the order 
was unnecessary, for more than the proper 
number were in her already. 

‘¢ Plug in—lower away.”’ 

But mishaps never come singly. Scarcely 
had this boat gone a foot from the davit 
than the volunteer who was acting as 
cockswain, in reaching out for something, 
inadvertently let go the line which, in 
Kynaston’s apparatus, keeps the tackles 
hooked ; consequently, down went the boat 
and crew twenty feet, with a terrific 
crash ; the men were struggling for their 
lives, and the boat was stove. 

But meantime, more men having’ been 
sent into the lee cutter, their weight 
caused the pendants to render, and the 
boat got afloat, and was soon employed 
picking up the struggling crew. 

Seeing this, Lieut. Fitzroy collected 
some hands, and lowered the lifeboat gig, 
which was fitted with common tackles, 
got down into her himself by the falls, 
and, pulling round to windward, shouted 
to the signal-man for directions. 

The signal-man was at his post, and 
had fixed his eye on the man overboard, 
as his duty was: but his messmate was 
in the stove boat, and he had cast one 
anxious look down to see if he was saved, 
and, sad to relate, in that one moment he 
had lost sight of Staines: the sudden 


{ 


308 WORKS 
darkness—there was no twilight—con- 
fused him more, and the ship had in- 
creased her drift. 

Fitzroy, however, made a rapid calcu- 
lation, and pulled to windward with all 
his might. He was followed in about a 
minute by the other sound boat power- 
fully manned; and both boats melted 
away into the night. 

There was a long and anxious suspense, 
during which it became pitch-dark, and 
the ship burned blue-lights to mark her 
position more plainly to the crews that 
were groping the sea for that beloved 
passenger. 

Capt. Hamilton had no doubt that the 
fate of Staines was decided, one way or 
the other, long before this; but he kept 
quiet until he saw the plain signs of a 
squall at hand. Then, as he was respon- 
sible for the safety of boats and ship, he 
sent up rockets to recall them. 

The cutter came alongside first. Lights 
were poured on her; and quavering 
voices asked, ‘‘ Have you got him? ”’ 

The answer was dead silence, and sor- 
rowful, drooping heads. 

Sadly and reluctantly was the order 
given to hoist the boat in, 

Then the gig came alongside, Fitzroy 
seated in her, with his hands before his 
face; the men gloomy and sad. 


‘““GonE! GoNnE!”’ 
Soon the ship was battling a heavy 
squall. 


At midnight all quiet again, and hove 
to. Then, at the request of many, the 
bell was tolled, and the ship’s company 
mustered bareheaded, and many a stout 
seaman in tears, as the last service was 
read for Christopher Staines. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


Rosa fell ill with grief at the hotel, and 
could not move for some days; but, the 
moment she was strong enough, she in- 


OF CHARLES READE. 


sisted on leaving Plymouth: like all 


wounded things, she must drag herself 
home. 
But what a home! How empty it 


| 
| 


struck, and she heart-sick and desolate ! 
Now all the familiar places wore a new | 


aspect: the little yard, where he had so 
walked and waited, became a temple to 
her; and she came out and sat in it, and 
now first felt to the full how much he had 
suffered there—with what fortitude! She 
crept about the house, and kissed the 
chair he had sat in, and every much-used 
place and thing of the departed. 

Her shallow nature deepened and deep- 
ened under this bereavement, of which, 
she said to herself with a shudder, she 
was the cause. And this is the course of 
nature: there is nothing like suffering to 
enlighten the giddy brain, widen the nar- 
row mind, improve the trivial heart. 

As her regrets were tender and deep, 
so her vows of repentance were sincere. 
Oh, what a wife she would make when he 
came back! how thoughtful! how pru- 
dent ! how loyal ! and never have a secret. 
She who had once said, ‘‘ What is the use 
of your writing ? nobody will publish it,”’ 
now collected and perused every written 
scrap. With simple affection she even 
looked up his very waste-paper basket, 
full of fragments he had torn, or useless 


| papers he had thrown there before he 


went to Plymouth. 

In the drawer of his writing-table she 
found his diary. It was a thick quarto: 
it began with their marriage, and ended 
with his leaving home—for then he took 
another volume. This diary became her 
Bible: she studied it daily, till her tears 
hid his lines. The entries were very mis- 
cellaneous, very exact. It was a map of 
their married life. But what she studied 
most was his observations on her own 
character, so scientific, yet so kindly ; and 
his scholar-like and wise reflections. The 
book was an unconscious picture of a 
great mind she had hitherto but glanced 
at: now she saw it all plain before her; 
saw it, understood it, adored it, mourned 
it. Such women are shallow, not for 
want of a head upon their shoulders, but 
of attention. They do not really study 


| 


A SIMPLETON. 


anything ; they have been taught at their 
schools the bad art of skimming’; but let 
their hearts compel their brains to think 
and think, the result is considerable. 
The deepest philosopher never fathomed 
a character more thoroughly than this 
poor child fathomed her husband when 
she had read his journal ten or eleven 
times, and bedewed it with a thousand 
tears. 

One passage almost cut her more in- 
teligent heart in twain: 

“This dark day I have done a thing 
incredible. I have spoken with brutal 
harshness to the innocent creature I 
have sworn to protect. She had run 
into debt, through inexperience, and 
that unhappy timidity which makes 
women conceal an error until it rami- 
fies, by concealment, into a fault; and 
I must storm and rave at her till she 
actually fainted away. Brute! Ruffian ! 
Monster! And she, how did she punish 
me, poor Lamb? By soft and tender 
words—like a lady, as she is. Oh, my 
sweet Rosa, I wish you could know how 
you are avenged! Talk of the scourge— 
the cat! I would be thankful for two 
dozen lashes. Ah! there is no need, lI 
think, to punish a man who has been 
cruel to a woman. Let himalone. He 
will punish himself more than you can, 
if he really is a man.’’ 

From the date of that entry this self- 
reproach and self-torture kept cropping 
up every now and then in the diary; and 
it appeared to have been not entirely 
without its influence in sending Staines 
to sea, though the main reason he gave 
was that his Rosa might have the com- 
forts and luxuries she had enjoyed before 
she married him. 

One day, while she was crying over 
this diary, Uncle Philip called, but not 
to comfort her, I promise you. He burst 
on her, irate, to take her to task. He 
had returned, learned Christopher’s de- 
parture, and settled the reason in his 
own mind. That uxorious fool was gone 
to sea, by a natural reaction; his eyes 
were open to his wife at last, and he was 
sick of her folly; so he had fled to dis- 
tant climes, as who would not that could ? 


309 


‘* So, ma’am,”’ said he, ‘‘my nephew 
is gone to sea, I find—all in a hurry. 
Pray, may I ask what he has done that 
FOr 4 

It was a very;simple question, yet it 
did not elicit a very plain answer. She 
only stared at this abrupt inquisitor, and 
then cried piteously, ‘‘ Oh, Uncle Philip !”’ 
and burst out sobbing. 

“Why, what is the matter?” 

‘You will hate me now. He is gone 
to make money for me; and I would 
rather have lived on a crust. Uncle, don’t 
hate me. I’m a poor, bereaved, heart- 
broken creature, that repents.’’ 

‘‘Repents! heigho! why, what have 
you been up to now, ma’am? No great 
harm, Pll be bound. Flirting a little— 
with some fool—eh ? ”’ 
© Flirting! Me! a married woman!’’ 

‘Qh, to be sure! I forgot. Why, 
surely he has not deserted you.”’ 

‘* My Christopher desert me! He loves 
me too well; far more than I deserve, but 
not more than [ will. Uncle Philip, I am 
too confused and wretched to tell you all 
that has happened; but I know you love 
him though you had a tiff. Uncle, he 
called on you, to shake hands and ask 
your forgiveness, poor fellow! He was 
so sorry you were away. Please read his 
diary: it will tell you all, better than his 
poor foolish wife can. I know it by heart. 
I?ll show you where you and he quar- 
reled about me. There, see.’’ And she 
showed him the passage with her finger. 
‘¢He never told me it was that, or I 
would have come and begged your par- 
don on my knees. But see how sorry he 
was. ‘There, see.”’ 

** And now I’ll show you another place, 
where my Christopher speaks of your 
many, many acts of kindness. There, 
see. And now please let me show you 
how he longed for reconciliation. There, 
see. And it is the same through the 
book. And now I’ll show you how grieved 
he was to go without your blessing. I 
told him I was sure you would give him 
that, and him going away. Ah, me! will 
he ever return? Uncle dear, don’t hate 
me. You are his only relative; and what 
shall I do, now he is gone, if you disown 


310 


me? Why, you are the only Staines left 
me to love.’’ 

‘*Disown you, ma’am! that Ill never 
do. You are a good-hearted young 
woman, I find. There, run and dry your 
eyes, and let me read Christopher’s diary 
all through. ‘Then I shall see how the 
land lies.”’ 

Rosa complied with this proposal ; and 
left him alone while she bathed her eyes, 
and tried to compose herself, for she was 
all trembling at this sudden irruption. 

When she returned to the drawing- 
room he was walking about looking grave 
and thoughtful. 

“It is the old story,’’ said he rather 
gently: ‘a misunderstanding. How 
wise our ancestors were that first used 
that word to mean a quarrel! for look 
into twenty quarrels, and you shall detect 
a score of mis-under-standings. Yet our 
American cousins must go and substitute 
the unideaed word, ‘difficulty ’; that is 
wonderful. I had no quarrel with him ; 
delighted to see either of you. But I had 
called twice on him; so I thought he 
ought to get over his temper, and call on 
a tried friend like me. A misunderstand- 
ing! Now, my dear, let us have no more 
of these misunderstandings. You will 
always be welcome at my house; and I 
shall often come here, and look after you 
and your interests. What do you mean 
to do, 1 wonder ?”’ 

‘Sir, ’m to go home to my father, if 
he will be troubled with me. I have 
written to him.’’ 

‘And what is to become of the Bi- 
qOD TAS 

‘“¢My Christie thought I should like to 
part with it and the furniture ; but his 
own writing-desk and his chair, no, I 
never will; and his little clock. Oh! oh! 
oh! But I remember what you said about 
agents, and Idon’t know what to do; for 
I shall be away.’’ 

‘“‘Then leave it to me. 
live here with one servant. 
it for you.”’ 

‘You, Uncle Philip !’’ 

‘¢ Well, why not ? ’’ said he roughly. 

“That will be a great trouble and dis- 
comfort to you, I’m afraid.’’ 


y 


I’ll come and 
T’ll soon sell 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


“Tf I find it so, I’ll soon drop it. [Tm 
not the fool to put myself out for any- 
body. When you are ready to go out, 
send me word, and I’ll come in.’’ | 

Soon after this he bustled off. He gave 
her a hurried kiss at parting, as if he 
was ashamed of it, and wanted it over as 
quickly as possible. 

Next day her father came, condoled 
with her politely, assured her there was 
nothing to cry about; husbands were a 
sort of functionaries that always went to 
sea at some part of their career, and no 
harm ever came of it. On the contrary, 
‘© Absence makes the heart grow fonder,”’ 
said this judicious parent. 

This sentiment happened to be just a 
little too true, and set the daughter cry- 
ing bitterly; but she fought against it. 
‘Qh, no!’’ said she. “J mustn’t. Iwill 
not be always crying in Kent Villa.”’ 

“Lord forbid ! ”’ 

‘‘T shall get over it in time—a little.”’ 

‘“‘ Why, of course you will. But as to 
your coming to Kent Villa, I am afraid 
you would not be very comfortable there. 
You know, lam superannuated. Only get 
my pension now.”’ 

‘‘T know that, papa; and—why, that 
is one of the reasons. I have a good in- 
come now; and | thought if we put our 
means together.’’ 

“Oh! that is a very different thing. 
You will want a carriage, I suppose. I 
have put mine down.”’ 

‘*No carriage, no horse, no footman, 
no luxury of any kind, till my Christie 
comes back. I abhor dress, I abhor ex- 
pense; I detest everything I once liked 
too well! I hate every folly that has 
parted us ; and I hate myself worst of all. 
Oh! oh! oh! Forgive me for crying so.’’ 

‘¢ Well, I think you had better come at 
once. I dare say there are associations 
about this place that upset you. I shall 
go and make ready for you, dear; and 
then you can come as soon as you like.’’ 

He bestowed a paternal kiss on her 
brow, and glided doucely away before 
she could possibly cry again. 

The very next week Rosa was at Kent 
Villa, with the relics of her husband about 


/her: his chair, his writing-table, his clock, 


A SIMPLETON. 


his waste-paper basket, a very deep and 
large one. She had them all in her bed- 
room at Kent Villa. 

Here the days glided quietly but heavi- 
ly. She derived some comfort from Uncle 
Philip.. His rough friendly way was a 
tonic, and braced her. He called several 
times about the Bijou; and told her he 
had put up enormous boards all over the 
house, and puffed it finely. ‘‘1 have had 
a hundred agents at me,’’ said he; ‘‘ and 
the next thing, I hope, will be one cus- 
tomer; that is about the proportion.”’ 
At last he wrote her he had hooked a vic- 
tim, and sold the lease and furniture for 
nine hundred guineas. Staines had as- 
signed the lease to Rosa, so she had full 
powers; and Philip invested the money, 
and two hundred more she gave him, in a 
little mortgage at six per cent. 

Now came the letter from Madeira. It 
gave her new life. Christopher was well, 
contented, hopeful. His example should 
animate her. She would bravely bear the 
present, and share his hopes of the future. 
With these brighter views, nature co- 
operated. The instincts of approaching 
maternity brightened the future. She 
fell into gentle reveries, and saw her hus- 
band return, and saw herself place their 
infant in his arms with all a wife’s, a 
mother’s, pride. 

In due course came another long letter 
from the equator, with a full journal, and 
more words of hope. Home in less than a 
year, with reputation increased by this 
last cure; home, to part no more. 

Ah! what a changed wife he should 
find! how frugal, how candid, how full 
of appreciation, admiration, and love of 
the noblest, dearest husband that ever 
breathed ! 


Lady Cicely Treherne waited some 
weeks, to let kinder sentiments return. 
She then called in Dear Street, but found 
Mrs. Staines was gone to Gravesend. 
She wrote to her. 

In a few days she received a reply, 
studiously polite and cold. 

This persistent injustice mortified her 
at last. She said to herself, ‘‘ Does she 


think his departure was no loss to me ? | 


311 


It was to her interests, as well as his, I 
sacrificed my own selfish wishes. I will 
write to her no more.”’ 

This resolution she steadily maintained. 
It was shaken for a moment, when she 
heard, by a side wind, that Mrs. Staines 
was fast approaching the great pain and 
peril of women. Thenshe wavered. But 
no; she prayed for her by name in the 
liturgy, but she troubled her no more. 

This state of things had lasted some 
six weeks, when she received a letter from 
her Cousin Tadcaster, close on the heels 
of his last, to which she had replied as I 
have indicated. She knew his handwrit- 
ing, and opened it with a smile. 

That smile soon died off her horror- 
stricken face. The letter ran thus :— 


‘‘ TRISTAN D’ACUNHA, Jan. 5. 


‘¢ DEAR CICELY—A terrible thing has 
just happened. We signaled a raft, with 
a body onit; and poor Dr. Staines leaned 
out of the port-hole, and fell overboard. 
Three boats were let down after him ; 
but it all went wrong somehow, or it was 
too late. They could never find him; he 
was drowned; and the funeral service 
was read for the poor fellow. 

‘We are all sadlycut up. Everybody 
loved him. It was dreadful, next day at 
dinner, when his chair was empty. The 
very sailors cried at not finding him. 

‘First of all, I thought I ought to 
write to his wife. JI know where she 
lives; it is called Kent Villa, Gravesend. 
But I was afraid: it might kill her; and 
you are so good and sensible, I thought I 
had better write to you, and perhaps you 
could break it to her by degrees, before it 
gets in all the papers. 

‘‘T send this from the island, by a small 
vessel, and paid him ten pounds to take it. 

‘* Your affectionate cousin, 
‘<< TADCASTER.”’ 


Words are powerless to describe a blow 
like this: the amazement, the stupor, the 
reluctance to believe—the rising, swell- 
ing, surging horror. She sat like a 
woman of stone, crumpling the letter. 
‘‘ Dead ! dead !”’ 

For a long time this was all her mind 


312 


could realize—that Christopher Staines 
was dead. He who had been so full of 
lifeand thought and genius, and worthier 
to live than all the world, was dead ; and 
a million nobodies were still alive, and he 
was dead. 

It revealed to her, in one withering 
flash, that she loved him. She loved him, 
and he was dead. 

She lay back on the sofa, and all the 
power left her limbs. She could not move 
a hand. 

But suddenly she started up; for a 
noble instinct told her this blow must 
not fall on the wife as it had on her, and 
in her time of peril. 

She had her bonnet on in a moment, 
and, for the first time in her life, darted 
out of the house without her maid. She 
flew along the streets, scarcely feeling the 
ground. She got to Dear Street, and ob- 
tained Philip Staines’s address. She flew 
to it, and there learned he was down to 
Kent Villa. Instantly she telegraphed to 
her maid to come down to her at Graves- 
end, with things for a short visit, and 
wait for her at the station; and she went 
down by train to Gravesend. 

Hitherto she had walked on air, driven 
by one overpowering impulse. Now, as 
she sat in the train, she thought a little 
of herself. What was before her? To 
break to Mrs. Staines that her husband 
was dead. To tell her all her misgivings 
were more than justified. To encounter 
her cold civility, and let her know, inch 
by inch, it must be exchanged for curses 
and tearing of hair: her husband was 
dead. ‘To tell her this, and in the telling 
of it, perhaps reveal that it was her great 
bereavement, as well as the wife’s; for 
she had a deeper affection for him than 
she ought. 

Well, she trembled like an aspen-leaf— 
trembled like one in an ague, even as she 
sat; but she persevered. 

A noble woman has her courage; not 
exactly the same as that which leads for- 
lorn hopes against bastions bristling with 
rifles, and tongued with flames and thun- 
der-bolts, yet not inferior to it. 

Tadcaster, small and dull, but noble 
by birth and instinct, had seen the right 


WORKS OF CHARLES 


READE. 


thing for her to do; and she of the same 
breed, and nobler far, had seen it too; 
and the great soul steadily drew the re- 
coiling heart and quivering body to this 
fiery trial, this act of humanity, to do 
which was terrible and hard, to shirk it 
cowardly and cruel. 

She reachcd Gravesend, and drove in a 
fly to Kent Villa. 

The door was opened by a maid. 

‘Is Mrs. Staines at home ? ”’ 

“Yes, ma’am, she is at home ; but—”’ 

“*Can I see her ?”’ 

“Why, no, ma’am: not at present.’’ 

‘“*But I must see her. I am an old 
friend. Please take her my card. Lady 
Cicely Treherne.”’ 

The maid hesitated, and looked con- 
fused. ‘‘ Perhaps you don’t know, ma’am. 
Mrs. Staines, she is—the doctor have been 
in the house all day.”’ 

** Ah, the doctor ! 
Staines is here.’’ 

“Why, that 7s the doctor, ma’am. 
Yes, he is here.”’ 

“Then pray let me see him—or no; I 
had better see Mr. Lusignan.”’ 

‘‘Master have gone out for the day, 
ma’am; but, if you’ll step in the draw- 
ing-room, I’ll tell the doctor.”’ 

Lady Cicely waited in the drawing- 
room some time, heart-sick and trem- 
bling. 

At last Dr. Philip came in, with her 
card in his hand, looking evidently a 
little cross at the interruption. ‘* Now, 
madam, please tell me, as briefly as you 
can, what 1 can do for you.’’ 

«* Are you Dr. Philip Staines ? ”’ 

“TT am, madam, at your service—for 
five minutes. Can’t quit my patient long, 
just now.”’ 

‘© Oh, sir, thank God I have found you! 
Be prepared for ill news—sad news—a 
terrible calamity—I can’t speak. Read 
that, sir.’? And she handed him Tad- 
caster’s note. 

He took it and read it. 

He buried his face in his hands. 

‘‘Christopher! my poor, poor boy!” 
he groaned. But suddenly a terrible anx- 
iety seized him. ‘‘ Who knows of this ? ”’ 


I believe Dr. Philip 


he asked. 


A SIMPLETON. 


‘“‘Only myself, sir. I came here to 
break it to her.”’ 

“You are a good, kind lady for being 
so thoughtful. Madam, if this gets to 
my niece’s ears it will kill her, as sure as 
we stand here.”’ 

“Then let us keep it from her. Com- 
mand me, sir. I will do anything. I 
will live here—take the letters in—the 
journals—anything.”’ 

‘““No, no; you have done your part, 
and God bless you for it. I must stay 
here. Your ladyship’s very presence, 
and your agitation, would set the serv- 
ants talking, and some idiot-fiend among 
them babbling; there is nothing so ter- 
rible as a fool.”’ 

‘“‘May I stay at the inn, sir, just one 
night ? ”’ 

*¢Oh, yes, IL wish you would! and I will 
run over, if all is well with her—well with 
her? poor unfortunate girl !’’ 

Lady Cicely saw he wished her gone, 
and she went directly. 

At nine o’clock that same evening, as 
she lay on a Sofa in the best room of the 
inn, attended by her maid, Dr. Philip 
Staines came to her. She dismissed her 
maid. 

Dr. Philip was too old—in other words, 
had lost too many friends—to be really 
broken down by a bereavement ; but he 
was strangely subdued. The loud tones 
were out of him, and the loud laugh, 
and even the keen sneer. Yet, he was 
the same man, but with a gentler sur- 
face; and this was not without its 
pathos. 

“Well, madam,” said he gravely and 
quietly, ‘‘it is as it always has been. ‘ As 
is the race of leaves, so that of man.’ 
When one falls, another comes. MHere’s 
a little Christopher come, in place of him 
that is gone—a brave, beautiful boy, 
ma’am ; the finest but one I ever brought 
into the world. He is come to take his 
father’s place in our hearts—I see you 
valued his poor father, ma’am—but he 
comes too late for me. At your age, 
ma’am, friendships come naturally ; they 
spring like loves in the soft heart of youth : 
at seventy, the gate is not so open; the 
soil is more sterile. I shall never care for 


313 


another Christopher; never see another 
grow to man’s estate.”’ 

‘‘The mother, sir,’’ sobbed Lady Cicely: 
‘‘the poor mother ? ”’ 

‘“‘Like them all, poor creature! in 
heaven, madam; in heaven. New life! 
new existence ! a new character. All the 
pride, glory, rapture, and amazement of 
maternity — thanks to her ignorance, 
which we must prolong, or I would not 
give one straw for her life, or her son’s. 
I shall never leave the house till she does 
know it, and, come when it may, I dread 
the hour. She is not framed by nature to 
bear so deadly a shock.’’ 

‘‘ Her father, sir—would he not be the 
best person to break it to her? He was 
out to-day.”’ 

‘‘Her father, ma’am? I shall get no 
help from him. He is one of those soft, 
gentle creatures that come into the world 
with what your canting fools call a mis- 
sion; and his mission is to take care of 
number one. Not dishonestly, mind you, 
nor violently, nor rudely, but doucely and 
calmly. The care a brute like me takes 
of his vitals, that care Lusignan takes of 
his outer cuticle. His number one is a 
sensitive plant. No scenes, no noise: 
nothing painful—by the by, the little crea- 
ture that writes in the papers, and calls 
calamities painful, is of Lusignan’s breed. 
Out to-day! Of course he was out, 
ma’am: he knew from me his daughter 
would be in peril all day, so he visited a 
friend. He knew his own tenderness, and 
evaded paternal sensibilities; a self-de- 
fender. I count on no help from that 
charming man.” 

“A man! Icall such men reptiles!”’ 
said Lady Cicely, her ghastly cheek color- 
ing for a moment. 

‘Then you give them false impor- 
tance.”’ 

In the course of this interview, Lady 
Cicely accused herself sadly of having 
interfered between man and wife, and, 
with the best intentions, brought about 
this cruel calamity. ‘‘ Judge, then, sir,” 
said she, ‘“‘how grateful I am to you for 
undertaking this cruel task. I was her 
school-fellow, sir, and I love her dearly ; 
but she has turned against me, and now, 


314 WORKS 
oh, with what horror she will regard 
me !’’ 

‘Madam,’’ said the doctor, ‘‘ there is 
nothing more mean and unjust than to 
judge others by events that none could 
foresee. Your conscience is clear. You 
did your best for my poor niece: she has 
many virtues, but justice is one you must 
not look for in that quarter. Justice re- 
quires brains. It’s a virtue the heart 
does not deal in. You must be content 
with your own good conscience, and an 
old man’s esteem. You did all for the 
best; and this very day you have done 
a good kind action. God bless you 
for ‘it! * 3 

Then he left her ; and next day she went 
sadly home, and for many a long day the 
hollow world saw nothing of Cicely Tre- 
herne. 

When Mr. Lusignan came home that 
night, Dr. Philip told him the miserable 
story, and his fears. He received it not 
as Philip had expected. The bachelor had 
counted without his dormant paternity. 
He was terror-stricken—abject—fell into 
a chair, and wrung his hands, and wept 
piteously. To keep it from his daughter 
till she should be stronger seemed to him 
chimerical, impossible. However, Philip 
‘insisted it must be done; and he must 
make some excuse for keeping out of her 
way,or his manner would rouse her sus- 
picions. He consented readily to that, 
and, indeed, left all to Dr. Philip. 

Dr. Philip trusted nobody, not even his 
own confidential servant. He allowed no 
journal to come into the house without 
passing through his hands; and he read 
them all before he would let any other soul 
in the house see them. Heasked Rosa to 
let, him be her secretary, and open her 
letters, giving as a pretext that it would 
be as well she should have no small wor- 
ries or troubles just now. 

«“Why,’’ said she, ‘‘ I was never so well 
able to bear them. It must bea great 
thing to put me out now. LIamso happy, 
and live in the future. Well, dear uncle, 
you can if you like—what does it matter ? 
_—only there must be one exception: my 
own Christie’s letters, you know.”’ 


‘* Of course,”’ said he, wincing inwardly. | 


OF CHARLES READE. 


The very next day came a letter of con- 
dolence from Miss Lucas. Dr. Philip in- 
tercepted it, and locked it up, to be shown 
her at a more fitting time. 

But how could he hope to keep so public 
a thing as this from entering the house in 
one of a hundred newspapers ? 

He went into Gravesend, and searched 
all the newspapers, to see what he had to 
contend with. To his horror, he found it 
in several dailies and weeklies, and in two 
illustrated papers. He sat aghast at the 
difficulty and the danger. 

The best thing he could think of was to 
buy them all, and cut out the account. 
He did so, and brought all the papers, 
thus mutilated, into the house, and sent 
them into the kitchen. Hesaid to his old 
servant, ‘“‘These may amuse Mr. Lusig- 
nan’s people, and I have extracted all 
that interests me.’’ 

By these means he hoped that none of 
the servants would go and buy any more 
of these same papers elsewhere. 

Notwithstanding these precautions, he 
took the nurse apart, and said, ‘‘ Now, 
you are an experienced woman, and to be 
trusted about an excitable patient. Mind, 
I object to any female servant entering 
Mrs. Staines’s room with gossip. Keep 
them outside the door for the present, 
please. Oh! and nurse, if anything should 
happen likely to grieve or worry her, it 
must be kept from her entirely: can I 
trust you? ”’ 

“You may, sir.”’ 

“‘T shall add ten guineas to your fee if 
she gets through the month without a 
shock or disturbance of any kind.”’ 

She stared at him inquiringly. Then she 
Said : 

“You may rely on me, doctor.”’ 

‘‘T feel I may. Still, she alarms me. 
She looks quiet now, but she is very ex- 
citable.’’ 

Not all these precautions gave Dr. 
Philip any real sense of security ; still less 
did they to Mr. Lusignan. He was not a 
tender father, in small things; but the 
idea of actual danger to his only child 
was terrible to him; and he now passed 
his life in a continual tremble. 

This is the less to be wondered at when 


A SIMPLETON. 


I tell you that even the stout Philip began 
to lose his nerve, his appetite, his sleep, 
under this hourly terror and this hourly 
torture. 

Well did the great imagination of antiq- 
uity feign a torment too great for the 
mind long to endure, in the sword of Dam- 
ocles suspended by a single hair over 
his head. Here the sword hung over an 
innocent creature, who smiled beneath it 
fearless ; but these two old men must sit 
and watch the sword, and ask themselves 
how long before that subtle salvation 
shall snap. 

**Tll news travel fast,’’ says the prov- 
erb. ‘‘ The birds of the air shall carry 
the matter,’’ says Holy Writ; and it is 
so. No bolts nor bars, no promises nor 
precautions, can long shut out a great 
calamity from the ears it is to blast, the 
heart it is to wither. The very air seems 
full of it until it falls. 

Rosa’s child was more than a fortnight 
old, and she was looking more beautiful 
than ever, as is often the case with a very 
young mother, and Dr. Philip compli- 
mented her on her looks. ‘‘ Now,” said 
he, ‘‘you reap the advantage of being 
good and obedient, and keeping quiet. In 
another ten days or so, | may take you 
to the sea-side for a week. I have the 
honor to inform you that from about the 
fourth to the tenth of March there is al- 
ways a week of fine weather, which takes 
everybody by surprise except me. It 
does not astonish me, because I observe 
it is invariable. Now, what would you 
say if Il gave you a week at Herne Bay, 
to set you up altogether ? ”’ 

““ As you please, dear uncle,’’ said Mrs. 
Staines, with a sweet smile. ‘‘I shall be 
very happy to go or tostay. I shall be 
happy everywhere with my darling boy 
and the thought of my husband. Why, 
I count the days till he shall come back 
tome. No, to us—to us, my pet. How 
dare a naughty mammy say ‘to me,’ as 
if ‘me’ was half the ‘portance of 00, a 
precious pets.’ ”’ 

Dr. Philip was surprised into a sigh. 

‘‘What is the matter, dear?’’ said 
Rosa very quickly. 

‘‘The matter? ”’ 


315 


‘Yes, dear, the matter. You sighed— 
you, the laughing philosopher.”’ 

‘Did I? ’’ said he, to gain time. ‘‘ Per- 
haps I remembered the uncertainty of 
human life, and of all mortal hopes. The 
old will have their thoughts, my dear. 
They have seen so much trouble.”’ 

‘‘ But, uncle dear, he is a very healthy 
Chile 

beN Crys 

‘* And you told me yourself carelessness 
was the cause so many children die.’’ 

«That is true.”’ 

She gave him a curious and rather 
searching look; then, leaning over her 
boy, said, “‘ Mammy’s not afraid. Beau- 
tiful Pet was not born to die directly. He 
will never leave his mamma. No, uncle, 
he never can. For my life is bound in his 
and his dear father’s. It is a triple cord: 
one go, go all.”’ 

She said this with a quiet resolution 
that chilled Uncle Philip. 

At this moment the nurse, who had 
been bending so pertinaciously over some 
work that her eyes were invisible, looked 
quickly up, cast a furtive glance at Mrs. 
Staines, and, finding she was employed 
for the moment, made an agitated signal 
to Dr. Philip. All she did was to clinch 
her two hands and lift them half-way to 
her face, and then cast a frightened look 
toward the door; but Philip’s senses were 
so Sharpened by constant alarm and 
watching that he saw at once something 
serious was the matter. But, as he asked 
himself what he should do in case of some 
sudden alarm, he merely gave a nod of 
intelligence to the nurse, scarcely per- 
ceptible, then rose quietly from his seat, 
and went to the window. ‘Snow com- 
ing, I think,’’ said he. ‘‘ For all that, we 
shall have the March summer in ten days. 
You mark my words.’ He then went 
leisurely out of the room. At the door 
he turned, and, with all the cunning he 
was master of, said, ‘‘Oh! by the by, 
come to my room, nurse, when you are at 
leisure.”’ 

‘Yes, doctor,’’ said the nurse, but 
never moved. She was too bent on hid- 
ing the agitation she really felt. 

‘¢ Had you not better go to him, nurse?’” 


316 WORKS 
‘‘Perhaps I had, madam.’’ 
She rose with feigned indifference, and 

left the room. She walked leisurely down 

the passage, then casting a hasty glance 
behind her, for fear Mrs. Staines should 
be watching her, burst into the doctor’s 
room. They met at once in the middle of 
the room; and Mrs. Briscoe burst out, 

‘Sir, it is known all over the house ! ”’ 
‘‘Heaven forbid! What is known?”’ 
‘What you would give the whole world 

to keep from her. Why, sir, the moment 
you cautioned me, of course I saw there 
was trouble; but little I thought—sir, 
not aservant in the kitchen or the stable 
but knows that her husband—poor thing! 
poor thing! Ah! there goes the house- 
maid—to have a look at her.’’ 

‘«Stop her !”’ 

Mrs. Briscoe had not waited for this; 
she rushed after the woman, and told her 
Mrs. Staines was sleeping, and the room 
must not be entered on any account. 

‘©Oh, very well !’’ said the maid rather 
sullenly. . 

Mrs. Briscoe saw her return to the 
kitchen, and came back to Dr. Staines: 
he was pacing the room in torments of 
anxiety. 

“‘Doctor,’’ said she, “‘it is the old 
story: ‘Servants’ friends, the master’s 
enemies.’ An old servant came here to 
gossip with her friend the cook (she never 
could abide her while they were together, 
by all accounts), and told her the whole 
story of his being drowned at sea.”’ 

Dr. Philip groaned. ‘‘Cursed chat- 
terbox!’’ said he. ‘‘ What is to be 
done? Must we break it to her now? 
Oh, if I could only buy a few days more! 
The heart to be crushed while the body 
is weak! It is too cruel. Advise me, 
Mrs. Briscoe. You are an experienced 
woman, and | think you are a kind- 
hearted woman.’’ 

“Well, sir,’ said Mrs. Briscoe, “ I had 
the name of it when I was younger, be- 
fore Briscoe failed, and I took to nursing; 
which nursing hardens, sir, by use, and 
along of the patients themselves; for 
sick folk are lumps of selfishness: we 
see more of them than you do, sir. But 
this 1 will say, ’tisn’t selfishness that 


sea ! 


OF CHARLES READE. 


lies now in that room, waiting for the 
blow that will bring her to death’s door, 
I’m afraid, but asweet, gentle, thoughtful 
creature, aS ever supped sorrow; for I 
don’t know how ’tis, doctor, nor why ’tis, 
but an angel like that has always to sup 
sorrow.”’ 

‘But you do not advise me,”’ said the 
doctor, in agitation, ‘‘and something must 
be done.”’ 

«¢ Advise you, sir! it is not for me to 
do that. Iam sure I’m at my wits’ end, 
poor thing! Well, sir, I don’t see what 
you can do but try and break it to her. 
Better so than let it come to her like a 
clap of thunder. But I think, sir, I’d 
have a wet-nurse ready before I said 
much ; for she is very quick, and ten to 
one but the first word of such a thing 
turns her blood to gall. Sir, I once knew 
a poor woman—she was a carpenter’s 
wife —a-nursing her child, in the after- 
noon; and in runs a foolish woman, and 
tells her he was killed dead, off a scaffold. 
’Twas the man’s sister told her. Well, 
sir, she was knocked stupid like ; and she . 
sat staring, and nursing of her child, be- 
fore she could take it in rightly. The 
child was dead before supper-time, and 
the woman was not long after. The 
whole family was swept away, sir, in a 
few hours; and I mind the table was not 
cleared he had dined on when they came 
to lay them out. Well-a-day, nurses see 
sorrow ! ”’ 

“We all see sorrow that live long, 
Mrs. Briscoe. I am _ heart-broken my- 
self; | am desperate. You are a good 
soul, and I’ll tell you. When my nephew 
married this poor girl I was very angry 
with him, and I soon found she was not 
fit to be a struggling man’s wife, and 
then I was very angry with her. She 
had spoiled a first-rate physician, I 
thought. But since I knew her better 
it is all changed, she is so lovable. How 
I shall ever tell her this terrible thing, 
God knows. All I know is, that I will 
not throw a chance away. Her body 
shall be stronger before I break her 
heart. Cursed idiots, that could not save 
a single man with their boats in a calm 
Lord forgive me for blaming peo- 


A SIMPLETON. 


ple when I was not there to see! I say 
I will give her every chance. She shall 
not know it till she is stronger—no, 
not if I live at her door, and sleep 
there, and all. Good God! _ inspire 
me with something. There is always 
something to be done, if one could but 
see it.” 

Mrs. Briscoe sighed and said, “Sir, 
I think anything is better than for her 
to hear it from a servant; and they are 
sure to blurt it out. Young women are 
such fools.”’ 

So None wil sec whateit. 1s, 7) saidi) Dr} 
Philip. ‘I have gone all wrong from 
the first. I have been acting like a 
woman, when | should have acted like 
a man. Why, I only trusted you by 
halves. There was a fool for you. 
Never trust people by halves.’’ 

‘“‘That is true, sir.’’ 

‘Well, then, now I shall go at it like 
a man. I have a vile opinion of servants, 
but no matter. I'll try them: they are 
human, I suppose. I'll hit them between 
the eyes like aman. Go to the kitchen, 
Mrs. Briscoe, and tell them I wish to 
speak to all the servants, in-doors or 
out.”’ 

ees siren 

She stopped at the door, and said, “I 
had better get back to her as soon as I 
have told them.’’ 

“ Certainly.’’ 

‘* And what shall I tell her, sir? Her 
first word will be to ask me what you 
wanted me for. I saw that in her eye. 
She was curious: that is why she sent 
me after you so quick.”’ 

Doctor Philip groaned. He felt he 
was walking among pitfalls. He rapidly 
flavored some distilled water with orange- 
flower, then tinted it a beautiful pink, 
and bottled it. “ There,’’ said he: ‘‘I 
was mixing a new medicine. Tablespoon 
four times a day: had to filter it. Any 
lie you like.”’ 

Mrs. Briscoe went to the kitchen and 
gave her message, then went to Mrs. 
Staines with the mixture. Dr. Philip 
went down to the kitchen, and spoke to 
the servants very solemnly. He said, 
‘*My good friends, I am come to ask 


317 


your help in a matter of life and death. 
There is a poor young woman upstairs: 
she is a widow, and does not know it, 
and must not know it yet. If the blow 
fell now, I think it would kill her: in- 
deed, if she hears it all of a sudden at 
any time, that might destroy her. We 
are in so sore a Strait that a feather may 
turn the scale. So we must try all we 
can to gain a little time, and then trust 
to God’s mercy after all. Well, now 
what do you say? Will you help me 
keep it from her till the tenth of March, 
say ? and then I will break it to her by 
degrees. Forget she is your mistress. 
Master and servant, that is all very well 
at a proper time; but this is the time to 
remember nothing but that we are all 
one flesh and blood. We lie down to- 
gether in the churchyard, and we hope 
to rise together where there will be no 
master and servant. Think of the poor 
unfortunate creature as your own flesh 
and blood, and tell me, will you help me 
try and save her under this terrible 
blow ?”’ 

‘*Ay, doctor, that we will,’ said the 
footman. ‘‘ Only you give us our orders, 
and you will see.’’ 

“‘T have no right to give you orders ; 
but I entreat you not to show her, by 
word or look, that calamity is upon her. 
Alas ! it is only a reprieve you can give to 
her and to me. The bitter hour must 
come when I must tell her she is a widow, 
and her boy an orphan. When that day 
comes, I will ask you all to pray for me 
that I may find words. But now I ask 
you to give me that ten days’ reprieve. 
Let the poor creature recover a little 
strength before the thunder-bolt of afflic- 
tion falls on her head. Will you promise 
me ?”’ 

They promised heartily; and more 
than one of the women began to cry. 

‘* A general assent will not satisfy me,”’ 
said Dr. Philip. ‘‘I want every man and 
every woman to give me a hand upon it ; 
then I shall feel sure of you.”’ 

The men gave him their hands at once. 
The women wiped their hands with their 
aprons, to make sure they were clean, and 
gave him their hands too. The cook 


— 81d 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


said, ‘‘If any one of us goes from it, this | fore she answered such a simple ques- 


kitchen will be too hot to hold her.’’ 

‘‘Nobody will go from it, cook,’’ said 
the doctor. ‘‘I’m not afraid of that; 
and now, since you have promised me, 
out of your own good hearts, [ll try and 
be even with you. If she knows nothing 
of it by the tenth of March, five guineas 
to every man and woman in this kitchen. 
You shall see, that, if you can be kind, 
we can be grateful.”’ 

He then hurried away. He found Mr. 
Lusignan in the drawing-room, and told 
him all this. Lusignan was fluttered, but 
grateful. “Ah, my good friend,’’ said 
he, ‘‘this isa hard trial to two old men 
like you and me.”’ 

“Ttis,’? said Philip. ‘It has shown me 
my age. I declare I am trembling—l, 
whose nerves were iron. But I have a 
particular contempt for servants. Mer- 
cenary wretches ! I think Heaven inspired 
me to talk to them. After all, who 
knows? perhaps we might find a way to 
their hearts, if we did not eternally shock 
their vanity, and forget that it is, and 
must be, far greater than ourown. The 
women gave me their tears, and the men 
were earnest. Not one hand lay cold in 
mine. As for your kitchen-maid, I’d 
trust my life to that girl, What a grip 
she gave me! What strength! What 
fidelity was in it! My hand was never 
grasped before. I think we are safe for a 
few days more.”’ 

Lusignan sighed. ‘‘ What does it all 
come to? We are pulling the trigger 
gently, that is all.’’ 

‘¢No, no; that is not it. Don’t let us 
confound the matter with similes, please. 
Keep them for children.”’ 


Mrs. Staines left her bed, and would 
have left her room, but Dr. Philip forbade 
her strictly. 

One day, seated in her armchair, she 
said to the nurse, before Dr. Philip, 
‘“Nurse, why do the servants look so 
curiously at me? ’”’ 

Mrs. Briscoe cast a hasty glance at Dr. 
Philip, and then said, ‘‘I don’t know, 
madam. I never noticed that.’’ 

“Uncle, why did nurse look at you be- 


tion ? ”’ 

““T don’t know. What question ?”’ 

<* About the servants.”’ 

“Oh, about the servants!’ said he 
contemptuously. 

‘* You should not turn up your nose at 
them, for they are all most kind and at- 
tentive. Only I catch them looking at 
me so strangely ; really—as if they—”’ 

‘“Rosa, you are taking me quite out of 
my depth. The looks of servant-girls ! 
Why, of course a lady in your condition 
is an object of especial interest to them. 
I dare say they are saying to one an- 
other, ‘I wonder when my turn will 
come?’ A fellow-feeling makes us won- 
drous kind; that is a proverb, is it not ?’’ 

“To be sure. I forgot that.”’ 

She said no more, but seemed thought- 
ful, and not quite satisfied. 

On this, Dr. Philip begged the maids to 
go near her as little as possible. “You 
are not aware of it,’’ said he; *“‘but your 
looks and your manner of speaking rouse 
her attention; and she is quicker than I 
thought she was, and observes very sub- 
tlely.’’ 

This was done; and then she complained 
that nobody came near her. She insisted 
on coming downstairs: it was so dull. 

Dr. Philip consented, if she would be 
content to receive no visits for a week. 

She assented to that; and now passed 
some hours every day in the drawing- 
room. In her morning wrappers. so 
fresh and crisp, she looked lovely, and 
increased in health and strength every 
day. 

Dr. Philip used to look at her, and his 
very flesh to creep at the thought, that, 
ere long, he must hurl this fair creature 
into the dust of affliction; must, with a 
word, take the ruby from her lips, the 
rose from her cheeks, the sparkle from 
her glorious eyes—eyes that beamed on 
him with sweet affection, and a mouth 
that never opened but to show some sim- 
plicity of the mind or some pretty burst of 
the sensitive heart. 

He put off, and put off; and at last 
cowardice began to whisper, ‘‘ Why tell 
her the whole truth at all? Why not 


A SIMPLETON. 


take her through stages of doubt, alarm, 
and, after all, leave a grain of hope till 
her child gets so rooted in her heart 
that—’’? But conscience and good sense 
interrupted this temporary thought, and 
made him see to what a horrible life of 
suspense he should condemn a human 
creature, and live a perpetual lie, and be 
always at the edge of some pitfall or 
other. 

One day, while he sat looking at her, 
with all these thoughts, and many more, 
coursing through his mind, she looked up 
at him and surprised him. ‘‘Ah!”’ said 
she gravely. 

‘“‘What is the matter, my dear? ’’ 

«¢Oh, nothing !’’ said she cunningly. 

‘‘“Uncle dear,’’ said she _ presently, 
‘““when do we go to Herne Bay?” 

Now, Dr. Philip had given that up. 
He had got the servants at Kent Villa 
on his side, and he felt safer here than in 
any strange place; so he said, ‘‘I don’t 
know: that all depends. There is plenty 
of time.’’ 

‘*No, uncle,’’ said Rosa gravely. ‘1 
wish to leave this house. I can hardly 
breathe in it.’’ 

‘¢ What! your native air ?”’ 

‘« Mystery is not my native air, and this 
house is full of mystery. Voices whisper 
at my door, and the people don’t come in. 
The maids cast strange glances at me, 
and hurry away. I scolded that pert 
girl, Jane, and she answered me as mad 
as Moses. I catch you looking at me, 
with love, and something else. What is 
that something? It is pity: that is what 
itis. Do you think, because Iam called 
a simpleton, that I have no eyes, nor ears, 
nor sense? What is this secret which 
you are all hiding from one person, and 
that is me? Ah! Christopher has not 
written this five weeks. Tell me the 
truth, for I will know it,’’ and she started 
up in wild excitement. 

Then Dr. Philip saw the hour was 
come. 

He said, “‘“My poor girl, you have 
read us aright. I am anxious about 
Christopher, and all the servants know 
iti"? 

‘* Anxious, and not tell me—his wife— 


319 


the woman whose life is bound up in 
his !”’ 

“Was it for us to retard your conva- 
lescence, and set you fretting and perhaps 
destroy your child? Rosa, my darling, 
think what a treasure Heaven has sent 
you, to love and care for.’’ 

‘‘ Yes,’’ said she, trembling, “‘ Heaven 
has been good to me; I hope Heaven 
will always be as good to me. I don’t 
deserve it; but I tell God so. Iam very 
grateful, and very penitent. I never for- 
get that if I had been a good wife, my 
husband —five weeks is a long time. 
Why do you tremble so? Why are you 
so pale—a strong man like you? Ca- 
lamity ! calamity ! ”’ 

Dr. Philip hung his head. 

She looked at him, started wildly up, 
then sank back into her chair. So the 
stricken deer leaps, then falls. Yet even 
now she put on a deceitful calm, and 
said, “‘Tell me the truth. I have a 
right to know.’’ 

He stammered out, ‘‘ There is a report 
of an accident at sea.”’ 

She kept silence. 

‘Of a passenger drowned—out of that 
ship. This, coupled with his silence, fills 
our hearts with fear.’’ 

‘‘It is worse—you are breaking it to 
me—you have gone too far to stop. One 
word, is he alive? Oh, say he is alive! ”’ 

Philip rang the bell hard, and said, in 
a troubled voice, “ Rosa, think of your 
childe. 

‘‘Not when my husband—is he alive, 
or dead? ”’ 

‘‘It is hard to say, with such a terrible 
report about, and no letters,’ faltered the 
old man, his courage failing him. 

‘‘What are you afraid of ? Do you 
think I can’t die, and go to him? Alive, 
or dead?’’ and she stood before him, 
raging and quivering in every limb. 

The nurse came in. 

‘“‘Hetch her child,’’ he cried. 
have mercy on her! ”’ 

‘*Ah, then, he is dead,’’ said she, with 
stony calmness. ‘‘I drove him to sea, 
and he is dead.’’ 

The nurse rushed in, and held the child 
to her. 


““God 


320 WORKS 

She would not look at it. 

“* Dead ! ’’ 

‘Yes, our poor Christie is gone; but 
his child is here, the image of him. Do 
not forget the mother. Have pity on 
his child and yours.”’ 

“Take it out of my sight!’’ she 
screamed. ‘‘ Away with it, or I shall 
murder it, as I have murdered its father. 
My dear Christie, before all that live! 
IT have killed him. I shall die for him. 
I shall go to him.’’ She raved and tore 
her hair. Servants rushed in. Rosa was 
carried to her bed, screaming and rav- 
ing, and her black hair all down on both 
sides, a piteous sight. 

Swoon followed swoon; and that very 
night brain-fever set in with all its sad 
accompaniments. A poor bereaved creat- 
ure, tossing and moaning; pale, anx- 
ious, but resolute faces of the nurse 
and the kitchen-maid watching; on one 
table a pail of ice, and on another, alas! 
the long, thick, raven hair of our poor 
simpleton, lying on clean silver paper. 
Dr. Philip had cut it all off with his own 
hand; and he was now folding it up, and 
crying over it; for he thought to him- 
self, ‘‘ Perhaps in a few days more, only 
this will be left of her on earth.’’ 


CHAPTER XTYV.. 


STAINES fell head-foremost into the sea 
with a heavy plunge. Being an excellent 
swimmer, he struck out the moment he 
touched the water; and that arrested his 
dive, and brought him up with a slant, 
shocked and panting, drenched and con- 
fused. The next moment he saw, as 
through a fog —his eyes being full of 
water — something fall from the ship. 
He breasted the big waves, and swam 
toward it: it rose on the top of a wave, 
and he saw it was a life-buoy. Encum- 
bered with wet clothes, he seemed im- 


OF CHARLES 


READE. 


potent in the big waves; they threw him 
up so high, and down so low. 

Almost exhausted, he got to the life- 
buoy, and clutched it with a fierce grasp 
and a wild cry of delight. He got it over 
his head, and, placing his arms round the 
buoyant circle, stood with his breast and 
head out of water, gasping. 

He now drew a long breath, and got his 
wet hair out of his eyes, already smarting 
with salt-water, and, raising himself on 


the buoy, looked out for help. 


He saw, to his great concern, the ship 
already at a distance. She seemed to 
have flown; and she was still drifting 
fast away from him. 

He saw no signs of help. His heart 
began to turn as cold as his drenched 
body. A horrible fear crossed him. 

But presently he saw the weather-boat 
filled, and fall into the water; and then 
a wave rolled between him and the ship, 
and he only saw her topmast. 

The next time he rose on a mighty 
wave, he saw the boats together astern 
of the vessel, but not coming his way; 
and the gloom was thickening, the ship 
becoming indistinct, and all was doubt 
and horror. 

A life of 
minutes. 

He rose and fell like a cork on the 
buoyant waves—rose and fell, and saw 
nothing but the ship’s lights, now ter- 
ribly distant. 

But at last, as he rose and fell, he 
caught a few fitful glimpses of a smaller 
light rising and fading like himself. ‘‘A 
boat !’’ he cried, and, raising himself as 
high as he could, shouted, cried, implored, 
for help. He stretched his hands across 
the water. ‘‘ This way, this way! ”’ 

The light kept moving; but it came no 
nearer. They had greatly underrated the 
drift. The other boat had no light. 

Minutes passed of suspense, hope, 
doubt, dismay, terror. Those minutes 
seemed hours. 

In the agony of suspense the quaking 
heart sent beads of sweat to the brow, 
though the body was immersed. 

And the gloom deepened and the cold 
waves fiung him up to heaven with their 


agony passed in a few 


= i SS 
SN . ‘h 
iy = a 
= ade SS = 
—S]S=) 
S : SS e i aS 
bez = S SX ——~ ft) 
S SSS I 


HE SICKENED AT THE SIGHT. 
i —A Sinipleton, Chapter XV. 


\ 
READE, Volume Eiht. 


A SIMPLETON. 


giant arms, and then down again to hell ; 
and still that light, his only hope, was 
several hundred yards from him. 

Only fora moment ata time could his 
eyeballs, straining with agony, catch this 


\will-o’-the-wisp — the boat’s light. It 


groped the sea up and down, but came 
no nearer. 

When what seemed days of agony had 
passed, suddenly a rocket rose in the 
horizon: so it seemed to him. 

The lost man gave a shriek of joy; 
so prone are we to interpret things 
hopefully. 

Misery! The next time he saw that 
little light, that solitary spark of hope, 
it was not quite so near as before. A 
mortal sickness fell on his heart. The 
ship had recalled the boats by rocket. 

He shrieked, he cried, he screamed, 
He, raved.- 4 *Oh,'/Rosa. Rosai!? for: her 
sake, men, men, do not leave me. I am 
here, here ! ”’ 

In vain. The miserable man saw the 
boat’s little light retire, recede, and melt 
into the ship’s larger lights; and that 
light glided away. 

Then a cold deadly stupor fell on him. 
Then Death’s icy claw seized his heart, 
and seemed to run from it to every part 
of him. He was a dead man. Only a 
question of time. Nothing to gain by 
fioating. 

But the despairing mind could not quit 
the world in peace; and even here in the 
cold, cruel sea the quivering body clung 
to this fragment of life, and winced at 
Death’s touch, though more merciful. 

He despised this weakness; he raged 
at it; he could not overcome it. 

Unable to live or to die, condemned to 
float slowly, hour by hour, down into 
Death’s jaws. 

To a long, death-like stupor succeeded 
frenzy. Fury seized this great and long- 
suffering mind. It rose against the 
cruelty and injustice of his fate. He 
cursed the world, whose stupidity had 
driven him to sea; he cursed remorse- 
less nature; and at last he railed on the 
God who made him and made the cruel 
water that was waiting for his body. 
“‘God’s justice! God’s mercy! God’s 


d21 


power! they are all lies,’’ he shouted, 
“dreams, chimeras, like Him, the all- 
powerful and good, men babble of by 
the fire. If there was a God more 
powerful than the sea, and only half as 
good as men are, He would pity my poor 
Rosa and me, and send a hurricane to 
drive those caitiffs back to the wretch 
they have abandoned. Nature alone is 
mighty. Oh! if I could have her on 
my side, and only God against me! 
But she is as deaf to prayer as He is, 
as mechanical and remorseless. I am 
a bubble melting into the sea. Soul I 
have none: my body will soon be noth- 
ing, nothing. So ends an honest loving 
life. I always tried to love my fellow- 
creatures. Curse them! curse them! 
Curse the earth! Curse the sea! Curse 
all nature! there is no other God for 
me to curse.”’ 

The moon came out. 

He raised his head and staring eye- 
balls, and cursed her. 

The wind began to whistle, and flung 
spray in his face. 

He raised his fallen head and staring 
eyeballs, and cursed the wind. 

While he was thus ravine he became 
sensible of a black object to wind- 
ward. — 

It looked like a rail, and a man leaning 
on it. 

He stared; he cleared the wet hair 
from his eyes, and stared again. 

The thing being larger than himself, 
and partly out of water, was drifting to 
leeward faster than himself. 

He stared and trembled; and at last it 
came nearly abreast, black, black. 

He gave a loud cry, and tried to swim 
toward it; but encumbered with his life- 
buoy, he made little progress. Thething 
drifted abreast of him but ten yards dis- 
tant. 

As they each rose high upon the waves, 
he saw it plainly. 

It was the very raft that had been the 
innocent cause of his sad fate. 

He shouted with hope, he swam, he 
struggled ; he got near it, but not to it; 
it drifted past, and he lost his chance of 


intercepting it. He struggled after it. 
a 1 1 READE—VOL. VIII. 


322 


The life-buoy would not let him catch 
it. 

Then he gave a cry of agony, rage, 
despair, and flung off the life-buoy, and 
risked all on this one chance. 

He gains a little on the raft. 

He loses. 

He gains. He cries, ‘‘ Rosa, Rosa !”’ 
and struggles with all his soul, as well 
as his body: he gains. 

But, when almost within reach, a wave 
half drowns him, and he loses. 

He cries, ‘‘ Rosa, Rosa!’’ and swims 
high and strong. ‘‘ Rosa, Rosa, Rosa !”’ 

He’ is near it.) °>He: cries;: “Rosa, 
Rosa !’’ and, with all the energy of 
love and life, flings himself almost out 
of the water, and catches hold of the 
nearest thing on the raft. 

It was the dead man’s leg. 

It seemed as if it would come away in 
his grasp. He dared not try to pull him- 
self up by that. But he held on by it, 
panting, exhausting, faint. 

This faintness terrified him. 
thought he, “if 1 faint now 
over.”’ 

Holding by that terrible and strange 
support, he made a grasp, and caught 
hold of the woodwork at the botton of 
the rail. He tried to draw himself up. 
Impossible. 

He was no better off than with his life- 
buoy. 

But in situations so dreadful men think 
fast. He worked gradually round the 
bottom of the raft by his, hands, till he 
got to leeward, still holding on. There 
he found a solid block of wood at the edge 
of the raft. He pried himself carefully 
up: the raft in that part then sank a 
little. He got his knee upon the timber 
of the raft, and, with a wild cry, seized 
the nearest upright, and threw both arms 
round it, and clung tight. Then first he 
found breath to speak. ‘‘THANK GoD!”’ 
he cried, kneeling on the timber, and 
grasping the upright post—‘‘ OH, THANK 
GOD, THANK Gop! ’’ 


IEG Nig 
aAle ois 


uprights. 


WORKS OF CHARLES REHADE. 


CHAPTER XV. 


‘THANK Gop?’ why, according to 
his theory, it should have been ‘‘ Thank 
Nature.’’ But I observe, that, in such 
cases, even philosophers are ungrateful to 
the mistress they worship. _ 

Our philosopher not only thanked Goc, 
but, being on his knees, prayed forgivs- 
ness for his late ravings—prayed hard, 
with one arm curled round the upright, 
lest the sea. which ever and anon rushed 
over the bottom of the raft, should 
swallow him up in a moment. 

Then he rose carefully, and wedged 
himself into the corner of the raft op- 
posite to that other figure, ominous relic 
of the wild voyage the new-comer had en- 
tered upon. He put both arms over the 


‘rail, and stood erect. 


The moon was now up; but so was the 
breeze. Fleecy clouds flew with vast 
rapidity across her bright face, and it 
was by fitful though vivid glances Staines 
examined the raft and his companion. 

The raft was large, and well made of 
timbers tied and nailed together; and a 
strong rail ran round it resting on several 
There were also some blocks 
of a very light wood screwed to the 
horizontal timbers; and these made it 
float high. 

But what arrested and fascinated the 
man’s gaze was his dead companion—sole 
survivor, doubtless, of a horrible voyage ; 
since the raft was not made for one, nor 
by one. 

It was a skeleton, or nearly, whose 
clothes the seabirds had torn, and pecked 
every limb in all the fleshy parts: the 
rest of the body had dried to dark 
leather on the bones. The head was 
little more than an eyeless skull; but, 
in the fitful moonlight, those huge hollow 
caverns seemed gigantic lamp-like eyes, 
and glared at him fiendishly, appallingly. 

He sickened at the sight. He tried not 
to look at it; but it would be looked at, 
and threaten him in the moonlight with 
great lack-luster eyes. 

The wind whistled, and lashed his face 
with spray torn off the big waves; and 
the water was nearly always up to his 


o 


A SIMPLETON. 


knees; and the raft tossed so wildly, it 
was all he could do to hold on in his cor- 
ner. In which struggle still those mon- 
strous lack-luster eyes, like lamps of 
death, glared at him in the moon, and 
all else dark, except the fiery crests of the 
black mountain billows, tumbling and 
raging all around. 

What a night ! 

But before morning the breeze sank, 
the moon set, and a somber quiet suc- 
ceeded, with only that grim figure in out- 
line dimly visible. Owing to the motion 
still retained by the waves, it seemed to 
nod and rear,and be ever preparing to 
rush upon him. | 

The sun rose glorious on a lovely scene ; 
the sky was a very mosaic of colors sweet 
and vivid, and the tranquil, rippling sea, 
peach-colored to the horizon, with lines of 
diamonds where the myriad ripples broke 
into smiles. 

Staines was asleep, exhausted. Soon 
the light awoke him, and he looked up. 
What an incongruous picture met his 
eye !—that heaven of color all above and 
around, and right before him, like a devil 
stuck in mid-heaven, that grinning corpse, 
whose fate foreshadowed his own. 

But daylight is a great strengthener of 
the nerves. The figure no longer appalled 
him, a man who had long learned to look 
with Science’s calm eye upon the dead. 
When the sea became like glass, and from 
peach-color deepened to rose, he walked 
along the raft, and inspected the dead 
man. He found it was a man of color, 
but not a black. The body was not kept 
‘in its: place, as he had supposed, merely 
by being jammed into the angle caused 
by the rail: it was also lashed to the 
corner upright by a long, stout belt. 
Staines concluded this had kept the body 
- there, and its companions had been swept 
away. 

This was not lost on him. He removed 
the belt for his own use: he then found it 
was not only a belt, but a receptacle. It 
was nearly full.of small hard substances 
that felt like stones. 

When he had taken it off the body he 
felt a compunction. ‘‘ Ought he to rob 
the dead, and expose it to be swept into 


+ 


323 


the sea at the tirst wave, like a dead 
dog!”’ 

He was about to replace the belt when 
a middle course occurred to him. Hewas 
aman who always carried certain useful 
little things about him; viz., needles, 
thread, scissors, and string. He took a 
piece of string, and easily secured this 
poor light skeleton to the raft. The belt 
he strapped to the rail, and kept for his 
own need. 

And now hunger gnawed him. No food 
was near. There was nothing but the 
lovely sea and sky, mosaic with color, 
and that grim, ominous skeleton. 

Hunger comes and goes many times 
before it becomes insupportable. All 
that day and night, and the next day, he 
suffered its pangs ; and then it became 
torture, but the thirst maddening. 

Toward night fell a gentle rain. 
spread a handkerchief and caught it. 
sucked the handkerchief. 

This revived him, and even allayed in 
some degree the pangs of hunger. 

Next day was cloudless, A hot sun 
glared on his unprotected head, and bat- 
tered down his enfeebled frame. 

He resisted as well as he could. He 
often dipped his head, and as often the 
persistent sun, with cruel glare, made it 
smoke again. 

Next day the same; but the strength 
to meet it was waning. He lay down 
and thought of Rosa, and wept bitterly. 
He took the dead man’s belt, and lashed 
himself to the upright. That act, and 
his tears for his beloved, were almost his 
last acts of perfect reason; for next day 
came the delusions and the dreams that 
succeed when hunger ceases to torture, 
and the vital powers begin to ebb. He 
lay and saw pleasant meadows, with me- 
andering streams, and clusters of rich 
fruit that courted the hand and melted in 
the mouth. 

Ever and anon they vanished, and he — 
saw grim Death looking down on him 
with those big cavernous eyes. 

By and by—whether his body’s eye saw 
the grim skeleton, or his mind’s eye the 
juicy fruits, green meadows, and pearly 
brooks—all was shadowy. 


He 
He 


B24 


So in a placid calm, beneath a blue 
sky, the raft drifted dead, with its dead 
freight, upon the glassy purple ; and he 
drifted, too, toward the world unknown. 


There came across the waters to that 
dismal raft a thing none too common by 
sea or land—a good man. 

He was tall, stalwart, bronzed, and 
had hair like snow before his time; for 
he had known trouble. He commanded 
a merchant steamer bound for Calcutta, 
on the old route. 

The man at the mast-head descried a 
floating wreck, and hailed the deck ac- 
cordingly. The captain altered his course 
without one moment’s hesitation, and 
brought up alongside, lowered a boat, 
and brought the dead and the breathing 
man on board. 

A young middy lifted Staines in his 
arms from the wreck to the boat. He 
whose person I described in Chapter I. 
weighed now no more than that. 

Men are not always rougher than wo- 
men. Their strength and nerve enable 
them now and then to be gentler than 
butter-fingered angels, who drop frail 
things through sensitive agitation, and 
break them. These rough men saw 
Staines was hovering between life and 
death, and they handled him like a 
thing the ebbing life might be shaken 
out of in a moment.- It was pretty to 
see how gingerly the sailors carried the 
sinking man up the ladder; and one 
fetched swabs, and the other laid him 
down softly on them at their captain’s 
feet. 

‘“‘ Well done, men!”’’ said he. 
fellow! Pray Heaven we may not have 
come too late. Now stand aloof a bit. 
Send the surgeon aft.’’ 

The surgeon came, and looked, and felt 
the heart. He shook his head, and called 
for brandy. Hehad Staines’s head raised 
and got half a spoonful of diluted brandy 
down his throat. But there was an omi- 
nous gurgling. 

After several such attempts at inter- 
vals, he said plainly the man’s life could 
not be saved by ordinary means. i 

‘Then try extraordinary ’’ said the 


“POOL 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


captain. ‘‘ My orders are that he is to 
be saved. There is life in him. You 
have only got to keep it there. He must 
be saved; he shall be saved.”’ 

‘‘T should like to try Dr. Staines’s 
remedy,’’ said the surgeon. 

«Try it, then ; what is it ?’’ 

‘* A bath of beef-tea. Dr. Staines says 
he applied it to a starved child—in the 
Lancet.’ 

“Take a hundred-weight of beef, and 
boil it in the coppers.’’ 

Thus encouraged, the surgeon went to 
the cook, and very soon beef was steam- 
ing on a scale and at a rate unparalleled. 

Meantime Captain Dodd had the pa- 
tient taken to his own cabin; and he and 
his servant administered weak brandy 
and water with great caution and skill. 

There was no perceptible result. But, 
at all events, there was life and vital 
instinct left, or he could not have swal- 
lowed. 

Thus they hovered about him for some 
hours, and then the bath was ready. 

The captain took charge of the patient’s 
clothes ; the surgeon and a sailor bathed 
him in Jukewarm beef-tea, and then cov- 
ered him with very warm blankets next 
the skin. Guess how near a thing it 
seemed to them when I tell you they 
dared not rub him. 

Just before sunset his pulse became 
perceptible. The surgeon administered 
half a spoonful of egg-flip. The patient 
swallowed it. 

By and by he sighed. 

“He must not be left day or night,”’ 
said the captain. ‘‘1 don’t know who’ 
or what he is; but he is a man; and I 
could not bear him to die now.’’ 

That night Capt. Dodd overhauled the 
patient’s clothes, and looked for marks 
on his linen. There were none. 

‘¢ Poor devil!’ said Capt. Dodd. 
is a bachelor.’’ 

Capt. Dodd found his pocket-book, with 
bank-notes £200. He took the numbers, 
made a memorandum of them, and locked 
the notes up. 

He lighted his lamp, examined the belt, 
unripped it, and poured out the contents 
on his table. 


(a4 He 


A SIMPLETON. 


They were dazzling. A great many 
large pieces of amethyst, and some of 
white topaz and rock-crystal, a large 
number of smaller stones, carbuncles, 
chrysolites, and not a few emeralds. 
Dodd looked at them with pleasure, 
sparkling in the lamplight. 

‘What a lot!’? said he. “I wonder 
what they are worth.’’ He sent for the 
first mate, who, he knew, did a little pri- 
vate business in precious stones. ‘‘ Mas- 
terton,’’ said he, ‘‘oblige me by count- 
ing these stones with me, and valuing 
them.”’ 

Mr. Masterton stared, and his mouth 
watered. However, he named the vari- 
ous stones, and valued them. He said 
there was only one stone, a large emerald 
without a flaw, that was worth a heavy 
sum by itself; but the pearls, very fine ; 
and, looking at the great number, they 
must be worth a thousand pounds. 

Capt. Dodd then entered the whole 
business carefully in the ship’s log. The 
living man he described thus, ‘* About 
five feet six in height, and about fifty 
years of age.’’ Then he described the 
notes and the stones very exactly, and 
made Masterton, the valuer, sign the 
log. 

Staines took a good deal of egg-flip 
that night, and next day ate solid food ; 
but they questioned him in vain. His 
reason was entirely in abeyance: he had 
become an eater, and nothing else. 
Whenever they gave him food he showed 
a sort of fawning animal gratitude. 
Other sentiment he had none; nor did 
words enter his mind any more than a 
bird’s. And, since it is not pleasant to 
dwell on the wreck of a fine understand- 
ing, I will only say that they landed him 
at Cape Town, out of bodily danger, but 
weak, and his mind, ‘to all appearance, 
a hopeless blank. 

They buried the skeleton, read the ser- 
vice of the English Church over a Mala- 
bar heathen. 

Dodd took Staines to the hospital, and 
left twenty pounds with the governor of 
it to cure him. But he deposited Staines’s 
money and jewels with a friendly banker, 
and begged that the principal cashier 


325 


might see the man, and be able to rec- 
ognize him should he apply for his own. 
The cashier came and examined him, 
and also the ruby ring on his finger—a 
parting gift from Rosa—and remarked 
this was a new way of doing business. 
‘“‘Why, it is the only one, sir,”’ said 
Dodd. ‘‘ How can we give you his signa- 
ture? Heis not in his right mind.’’ 
‘*Nor never will be.”’ 
‘‘ Don’t say that, sir. 
the best, poor fellow.’’ 
Having made these provisions, the 
worthy captain weighed anchor with a 
warm heart and a good conscience. Yet 
the image of the man he had saved pur- 
sued him; and he resolved to look after 
him next time he should coal at Cape 
Town, homeward bound. 


Let us hope for 


Staines recovered his strength in about 
two months; but his mind returned in 
fragments, and very slowly. For a long, 
long time he remembered nothing that 
had preceded his great calamity. His 
mind started afresh, aided only by certain 
fixed habits; for instance, he could read 
and write. But, strange as it may ap- 
pear, he had no idea who he was; and, 
when his memory cleared a little on that 
head, he thought his surname was 
Christie; but he was not sure. 

Nevertheless, the presiding physician 
discovered in him a certain progress of 
intelligence, which gave him great hopes. 
In the fifth month, having shown a 
marked interest in the other sick patients, 
coupled with a disposition to be careful 
and attentive, they made him a nurse, or 
rather a sub-nurse under the special or- 
ders of a responsible nurse. I really be- 
lieve it was done at first to avoid the 
alternative of sending him adrift, or 
transferring him to the insane ward of 
the hospital. In this congenial pursuit he 
showed such watchfulness and skill that 
by and by they found they had got a 
treasure. T'wo months after that, he be- 
gan to talk about medicine, and aston- 
ished them still more. He became the 
puzzle of the establishment. The doctor 
and surgeon would converse with him, 
and try and lead him to his past life ; but, 


326 


when it came to that, he used to put his 
hands to his head, with a face of great 
distress ; and it was clear some impassa- 
ble barrier lay between his growing intel- 
ligence and the past events of his life. 
Indeed, on one occasion, he said to his 
kind friend the doctor, ‘‘The past !—a 
black wall, a black wall ! ’’ 

Ten months after his admission he was 
promoted to be an attendant, with a 
salary. 

He put by every shilling of it; for he 
said, ‘‘ A voice from the dark past tells 
me money is everything in this world.” 

A discussion was held by the authorities 
as to whether he should be informed he 
had money and jewels at the bank or 
not. 

Upon the whole, it was thought advis- 
able to postpone this information, lest he 
should throwit away. But they told him 
he had been picked up at sea, and both 
money and jewels found on him: they 
were in safe hands; only the person was 
away for the time. Still he was not to 
look upon himself as either friendless or 
moneyless. 

At this communication he showed an 
almost childish delight, that confirmed 
the doctor in his opinion he was acting 
prudently, and for the real benefit of an 
amiable and afflicted person not yet to be 
trusted with money and jewels. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


IN his quality of attendant on the sick, 
Staines sometimes conducted a weak but 
convalescent patient into the open air; 
and he was always pleased to do this, for 
the air of the Cape carries health and 
vigor on its wings. He had seen its fine 
recreative properties; and he divined, 
somehow, that the minds of convalescents 
ought to be amused ; and so he often 
begged the doctor to let him take a con- 
valescent abroad. Sooner than not, he 


WORKS OF CHARLES. READE. 


would draw the patient several miles in a 
Bath chair. He rather liked this; for 
he was a Hercules, and had no egotism 
or false pride where the sick were con- 
cerned. 

Now, these open-air walks exerted a 
beneficial influence on his own darkened 
mind. It is one thing to struggle from 
idea to idea; it is another when material 
objects mingle with the retrospect ; they 
seem to supply stepping-stones in the 
gradual resuscitation of memory and 
reason. 

The ships eding out of port were such 
a stepping-stone to him; and a vague 
consciousness came back to him of hav- 
ing been in a ship. 

Unfortunately, along with this reminis- 
cence came a desire to go in one again; 
and this sowed discontent in his mind; 
and, the more that mind enlarged, the 
more he began to dislike the hospital and 
its confinement. The feeling grew, and 
bade fair to disqualify him for his humble 
office. The authorities could not fail to 
hear of this; and they had a little dis- 
cussion about parting with him; but 
they hesitated to turn him adrift, and 
they still doubted the propriety of trust- 
ing him with money and jewels. 

While matters were in this state, a re- 
markable event occurred. He drew a 
sick person down to the quay one morn- 
ing, and watched the business of the port 
with the keenest interest. A ship at an- 
chor was unloading, and a great heavy 
boat was sticking to her side like a black 
leech. Presently this boat came away, 
and moved sluggishly toward the shore, 
rather by help of the tide than of the two 
men, who went through the form of pro- 
pelling her with two monstrous sweeps, 
while a third steered her. She contained 
English goods: agricultural implements, 
some cases, four horses, and a buxom 
young woman with a thorough English 
face. The woman seemed a little excited; 
and, aS She neared the landing-place, she 
called outin jocund tones to a young man 
on the shore, “It is all right, Dick: they 
are beauties.’’ And she patted the beasts 
as people do who are fond of them. 

She stepped lightly ashore; and then 


A SIMPLETON. 


came the slower work of landing her im- 
ports. She bustled about like a hen over 
her brood, and wasn’t always talking, 
but put in her word every now and then, 
never crossly, and always to the point. 

Staines listened to her, and examined 
her with a sort of puzzled look; but she 
took no notice of him, her whole soul was 
in the cattle. 

They got the things on board well 
enough ; but the horses were frightened 
at the gangway, and jibbed. Thena man 
was for driving them, and poked one of 
them in the quarter: he snorted and 
reared directly. 

‘*Man alive !”’ cried the young woman, 
‘‘that is not the way. They are docile 
enough, but frightened. Encourage ’em, 
and let ’em look at it. Give’em time. 
More haste, less speed, with timorsome 
cattle.’ 

“That is a very pleasant voice,’’ said 
poor Staines, rather more dictatorially 
than became the present state of his in- 
tellect. He added softly, “A true wo- 
man’s voice;’’ then, gloomily, ‘‘a voice 
of the past—the dark, dark past.”’ 

At this speech intruding itself upon the 
short sentences of business, there was a 
roar of laughter; and Phoebe Falcon 
turned sharply round to look at the 
speaker. She stared at him; she cried 
“Oh!’’ and clasped her hands, and col- 
ored all over. ‘‘ Why, sure,’’ said she, 
““T can’t be mistook. Those eyes — ’tis 
you, doctor, isn’t it? ’’ 

“* Doctor!’’ said Staines with a puzzled 
look. ‘“ Yes: I think they called me doc- 
tor once. I’m an attendant in the hos- 
pital now.’’ 

“Dick !’’ cried Phoebe in no little agi- 
tation. ‘‘Come here this minute !”’ 

‘What, afore I get the horses ashore?”’ 

‘* Ay, before you do another thing, or 


b] 


' say another word. Come here now!”’ 


So he came; and she told him to take a 
good look at the man. ‘‘ Now,’’ said she, 
“who is that ? ”’ 

“ Blest if I know,”’ said he. 

‘* What, not know the man that saved 
your own life! Oh, Dick! what are your 
eyes worth ?”’ 5 

This discourse brought the few persons 


327 


within hearing into one band of excited 
starers. 

Dick took a good look, and said, ‘‘ I’m 
blest if I don’t, though. It is the doctor 
that cut my throat.”’ 

This strange statement drew forth quite 
a shout of ejaculations. 

‘“‘Oh! better breathe through a slit 
than not at all,’ said Dick. - ‘Saved my 
life with that cut, he did — didn’t he, 
Pheeb ? ”’ 

‘That he did, Dick! Dear heart, I 
hardly know whether I am in my senses 
or not, seeing him a-looking so blank. 
You try him.”’ 

Dick came forward. ‘‘ Sure you remem- 
ber me, sir. Dick Dale. You cut my 
throat, and saved my life.”’ 

“Cut your throat! Why, that would 
kill you.”’ 

‘*Not the way you done it. Well, sir, 
you ain’t the man you was, that is clear: 
but you was a good friend to me; and 
there’s my hand.’’ 

“Thank you, Dick,’’ said Staines, and 
took his hand. ‘‘I don’t remember you. 
Perhaps you are one of the past. The 
past is a dead-wall to me—a dark dead- 
wall.’? And he put his hands to his head 
with a look of distress. 

Everybody there now suspected the 
truth: and some pointed mysteriously 
to their own heads. 

Phcebe whispered an inquiry to the 
sick person. 

He said a little pettishly, ‘‘ All I know 
is, he is the kindest attendant in ‘the 
ward, and very attentive.”’ 

‘Oh! then he is in the public hospi- 
tal.’’ 

‘* Of course he is.”’ 

The invalid, with the selfishness of his 
class, then begged Staines to take him 
out of all this bustle down to the beach. 
Staines complied at once with the utmost 
meekness, and said, ‘‘Good-by, old 
friends ; forgive me for not remembering 


you. It is my great affliction that the 
past is gone from me—gone, gone.’’ 
And he went sadly away, drawing his 


sick charge like a patient mule. 
Phoebe Falcon looked after him, and 


began to cry. 


328 


“Nay, nay, Phoebe,’’ said Dick: ‘don’t 
ye take on about it.”’ 

‘*T wonder at you,’’? sobbed Phoebe. 
“Good people, I’m fonder of my brother 
than he is of himself, it seems; for I 
can’t take it so easy. Well, the world 
is full of trouble. Let us do what we are 
here for. But I shall pray for the poor 
soul every night, that his mind may be 
given back to him.’’ 

So then she bustled, and gave herself 
to getting the cattle on shore, and the 
things put on board her wagon. 

But when this was done, she said to her 
brother, “‘ Dick, I did not think anything 
on earth could take my heart off the cat- 
tle and the things we have got from 
home; but I can’t leave this without 
going to the hospital about our poor 
dear doctor; and it is late for making a 
start, any way. 
get the newspapers for Reginald, he is so 
fond of them; and you must contrive to 
have one sent out regular after this; and 
I’) go to the hospital.’’ 

She went, and saw the head doctor, 
and told him he had got an attendant 
there she had known in England in a 
very different condition. And she had 
come to see if there was anything she 
could do for him; for she felt very grate- 
ful to him, and grieved to see him so. 

The doctor was pleased and surprised, 
and put several questions. 

Then she gave him a clear statement 
of what he had done for Dick in En- 
gland. 

‘‘Well,’’ said the doctor, “ I believe it 
is the same man; for, now you tell me 
this—yes, one of the nurses told me he 
knew more medicine than she did. His 
name, if you please.”’ 

‘His mame, -sir?”’ 

“Yes, hisname. Of course you know 
his name. Is it Christie? ”’ 

* Doctor,;~ said shhobe,., blushing 
don’t know what you will think of me; 
but I don’t know his name. Laws for- 
give me, I never had the sense to ask 
ites 

A shade of suspicion crossed the doc- 
tor’s face. 

Pheebe saw it, and colored to the tem- 


WORKS OF CHARLES 


And you mustn’t for-. 


READE. 


ples. ‘‘QOh, sir!’’ she cried piteously, 
‘don’t go for to think I have told you a 
lie! Why should I? And indeed I am 
not of that sort, nor Dick neither. Sir, 
I’ll bring him to you, and he will say the 
same. Well, we were all in terror and 
confusion, and I met him accidentally in 
the street. He was only a customer till 
then, and paid ready money:'so that is 
how I never knew his name; but, if I 
hadn’t been the greatest fool in England, 
I should have asked his wife.”’ 

“What! he has a wife?” 

‘* Ay, sir, the loveliest lady you ever 
clapped eyes on, and he is almost as 
handsome: has eyes in his head like 
jewels; ’twas by them I knew him on 
the quay; and I think he knew my voice 
again—said as good as he had heard it 
in past times.”’ 

‘‘Did he? Then we have got him,”’ 
cried the doctor energetically. 

SLAP ISIE: G 

“Yes: if he knows your voice, you 
will be able, in time, to lead his memory 
back: at least, I think so. Do you live 
in Cape Town? ’’ 

‘“‘Dear heart, no! I live at my own 
farm, a hundred and eighty miles from 
this.’’ 

«What a pity !”’ 

SaVV Ty. VSirins 

“¢ Well—hum !”’ 

Oh! if you think I could do the poor 
doctor good by having him with me, you 
have only to say the word, and out he 
goes with Dick and me to-morrow morn- 
ing. We should have started for home 
to-night but for this.’’ 3 

‘‘Are you in earnest, madam ?’’ said 
the doctor, opening his eyes. ‘‘ Would 
you really encumber yourself with a 
person whose reason is in suspense, and 
may never return ?”’ 

* But that is not his fault, sir. Why, 
if a dog had saved my brother’s life, I’d 
take it home, and keep it all its days; 
and this isa man, and a worthy man. Oh, 
sir! when I saw him brought down so, 
and his beautiful eyes clouded like, my 
very bosom yearned over the poor soul. 
A kind act done in dear old England— 
who could see the man in trouble here, 


A SIMPLETON. 


and not repay it, ay, if it cost one’s 
blood ? But, indeed, he is strong and 
healthy, and hands always scarce our 
way; and the odds are he will earn his 
meat one way or t’other; and, if he 
doesn’t, why, all the better for me: I 
shall have the pleasure of serving him 
for naught that once served me for 
neither money nor reward.”’ 

“You are a good woman,” said the 
doctor warmly. 

‘«‘There’s better, and there’s worse,”’ 
said Phoebe quietly, and even a little 
coldly. 

‘More of the latter,’’ said the doctor 
drylv. ‘‘ Well, Mrs.—”’ 

<sWalcon site 

‘We shall hand him over to your 
care; but first—just for form—if you are 
a married woman, we should like to see 
Dick here: he is your husband, I pre- 
sume.”’ 

Phoebe laughed merrily. ‘‘ Dick is my 
brother ; and he can’t be spared to come 
here. Dick! he’d say black was white if 
I told him to.”’ 

‘‘Then let us see your husband about 
it—just for form.”’ 

‘*My husband is at the farm. I could 
not venture so far away, and not leave 
Himeinscharre: -*-liiche ihadisaid,. (<1 
will not bring him into temptation,’’ 
that would have been nearer the truth. 
‘‘TLet that fly stick on the wall, sir. 
What I do my husband will approve.”’ 

‘‘] see how it is. You rule’ the 
roost.” 

Pheebe did not reply pointblank to 
that : she merely said, ‘‘ All my chickens 
are happy, great and small;’’ and an 
expression of lofty, womanly, innocent 
pride illuminated her face, and made it 
superb for a moment. 

In short it was settled that Staines 
should accompany her next morning to 
Dale’s Kloof Farm, if he chose. On in- 
quiry, it appeared that he had just re- 
turned to the hospital with his patient. 
He was sent for, and Phoebe asked him 
sweetly if he would go with her to her 
house, one hundred and eighty miles 
away, and she would be kind to him. 

“On the water? ’”’ 


329 


‘“Nay, by land; but’tis a fine country, 
and you will see beautiful deer, and things 
running across the plains, and—’’ 

‘*Shall I find the past again, the past 
again ? ”’ 

‘*Ay, poor soul, that we shall, God 
willing. You and I, we will hunt it 
together.” 

He looked at her, and gave her his 


hand. “Iwill go with you. Your face 
belongs to the past, so does your 
voice.”’ 


He then inquired, rather abruptly, had 
she any children. She smiled. 

“Ay, that I have, the loveliest little 
boy you ever saw. When you are as you 
used to be, you will be his doctor, won’t 
you ?”’ 

‘‘Yes, I will nurse him, and you will 
help me find the past.’’ 

Phoebe then begged Staines to be ready 
to start at six in the morning. She and 
Dick would take him up on their way. 

While she was talking to him, the 
doctor slipped out; and, to tell the truth, 
he went to consult with another author- 
ity whether he should take this opportu- 
nity of telling Staines that he had money 
and jewels at the bank. He himself was 
half inclined to do so; but the other, who 
had not seen Phoebe’s face, advised him 
to do nothing of the kind. ‘‘ They are al- 
ways short of money, these colonial farm- 
ers,’ said he: ‘‘she would get every 
shilling out of him.”’ 


“Most would; but this is such an 
honest face! ”’ 

SUWell:ss buts shes 1s a) mother you 
say.’ 

OV eS. 


‘* Well, what mother could be just to a 
lunatic with her own sweet angel babes 
to provide for ?”’ 

‘“‘That is true,’’ said Dr. “* Ma- 
ternal love is apt to modify the con- 
science.”’ 

“What I would do, I would take her 
address, and make her promise to write 
if he gets well; and, if he does get well, 
then write to him and tell him all about 
item 

Dr. —— acted on this shrewd advice, 
and ordered a bundle to be made up for 


330. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


the traveler out of the hospital stores: it | Dick with an ineffable expression of sweet- 


contained a nice light summer suit, and 
two changes of linen. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


NEXT morning Staines and Dick Dale 
walked through the streets of Cape Town 
side by side. Dick felt the uneasiness of 
a sane man, not familiar with the men- 
tally afflicted, who suddenly finds himself 
alone with one. Insanity turns men 
oftenest into sheep and hares ; but it does 
now and then make them wolves and 
tigers ; and that has saddled the insane 
in general with a character for ferocity. 
Young Dale, then, cast many a suspicious 
glance at his comrade as he took him 
along. These glances were reassuring. 
Christopher’s face had no longer the 
mobility, the expressive changes, that 
mark the superior mind. His counte- 
nence was monotonous; but the one ex- 
pression was engaging. There was a 
sweet, patient, lamb-like look, the glori- 
ous eye a little troubled and perplexed, 
but wonderfully mild. Dick Dale looked 
and looked ; and his uneasiness vanished. 
And the more he looked the more did a 
certain wonder creep over him, and make 
him scarce believe the thing he knew; 
viz., that a learned doctor had saved him 
from the jaws of death by rare knowl- 
edge, sagacity, courage, and skill com- 
bined, and that mighty man of wisdom 
was brought down to this lamb, and 
would go north, south, east, or west, with 
sweet and perfect submission, even as he, 
Dick Dale, should appoint. With these 
reflections honest Dick felt his eyes get a 
little misty; and to use those words of 
Scripture, which nothing can surpass or 
equal, his bowels yearned over the man. 

As for Christopher, he looked straight 
forward, and said not a word till they 
cleared the town; but when he saw the 
vast flowery vale, and the far-off violet 
hills, like Scotland, glorified, he turned to 


ness and good-fellowship, and said, ‘‘ Oh, 
beautiful! We’ll hunt the past to- 
gether.”’ | 


“ We—will—so,’”’ said Dick with a 


sturdy, and indeed almost a stern reso- 


lution. 

Now, this he said, not that he cared 
for the past, nor intended to waste the | 
present by going upon its predecessor’s 
trail; but he had come to a resolution— 
full three minutes ago—to humor his 
companion to the top of his bent, and 
say “Yes” with hypocritical vigor to 
everything not directly and immediately 
destructive to him and his. 

The next moment they turned a corner, 
and came upon the rest of their party, 
hitherto hidden by the apricot hedge and 
a turning in the road. A_ blue-black 
Caffre with two yellow Hottentot driv- 
ers, man and boy, was harnessing, in 
the most primitive mode, four horses 
on to the six oxen attached to the 
wagon; and the horses were flattening 
their ears, and otherwise resenting the 
incongruity. Meantime a fourth figure, 
a colossal young Caffre woman, looked 
on superior with folded arms like a sable 
Juno, looking down with that absolute 
composure upon the struggles of man 
and other animals, which Lucretius and 
his master Epicurus assigned to the 
divine nature. Without jesting, the 
grandeur, majesty, and repose of this 
figure were unsurpassable in nature, 
and such as have vanished from sculp- 
ture two thousand years and more. 

Dick Dale joined the group immediate- 
ly, and soon arranged the matter. Mean- 
time Phoebe descended from the wagon, 
and welcomed Christopher very kindly, 
and asked him if he would like to sit be- 
side her, or to walk. 

He glanced into the wagon: it was 
covered and curtained, and dark as a 
cupboard. ‘‘I think,’’ said he timidly, 
‘‘T shall see more of the past out here.’’ 

**So you will, poor soul,’’ said Phoebe 
kindly, ‘‘and better for your health. 
But you must not go far from the 
wagon, for [’m-a fidget; and I have 
got the care of you now, you know, for 


A SIMPLETON. 


want of a better. Come, Ucatella, you 
must ride with me, and help me sort the 
things: they are all higgledy-piggledy.”’ 
So those two got into the wagon through 
the back curtains. Then the Caffre driv- 
er flourished his kambok, or long whip, 
_in the air, and made it crack like a pis- 
tol, and the horses reared, and the oxen 
started, and slowly bored in between 
them, for they whinnied and kicked, and 
spread out like a fan all over the road: 
but a flick or two from the terrible kam- 
bok soon sent them bleeding and trem- 
bling, and rubbing shoulders, and the 
oxen mildly but persistently gorging 
their recalcitrating haunches, the intel- 
ligent animals went ahead, and revenged 
themselves by breaking the harness; but 
that goes for little in Cape travel. 

The body of the wagon was long and 
low and very stout. The tilt strong and 
tight made. The roof inside, and most 
of the sides, lined with green baize. Cur- 
tains of the same to the little window and 
the back. There was a sort of hold liter- 
ally built full of purchases, a small fire- 
proof safe, huge blocks of salt, saws, 
axes, pickaxes, adzes, flails, tools innum- 
erable,’ bales of wool and linen stuff, 
hams, and two hundred empty sacks 
strewn over all. In large pigeon-holes 
fixed to the sides were light goods, gro- 
ceries, collars, glaring cotton handker- 
chiefs for Phoebe’s aboriginal domestics, 
since not every year did she go to 
Cape Town—a twenty-days’ journey by 
wagon: things dangled from the very 
roof; but no hard goods there, if you 
please, to batter one’s head in a spill. 
Outside were latticed grooves with tent, 
tent-poles, and rifles. Great pieces of 
cork and bags of hay and corn hung 
dangling from mighty hooks; the latter 
to feed the cattle should they be compelled 
to camp out on some sterile spot in the 
Veldt, and, methinks, to act as buffers, 
should the whole concern roll down a 
nullah, or little precipice—no very un- 
common incident in the blessed region 
they must pass to reach Dale’s Kloof. 

Harness mended ; fresh start. The 
Hottentots and Caffre vociferated and 
yelled, and made the unearthly row of a 


’ 


331 


dozen wild beasts wrangling. The horses 
drew the bullocks, they the wagon: it 
crawled and creaked, and its appendages 
wabbled finely. 

Slowly they creaked and wabbled past 
apricot-hedges and detached houses and 
huts, and got into an open country with- 
out a tree, but here and there a stunted 
camel-thorn. The soil was arid and grew 
little food for man or beast, yet, by a 
singular freak of nature, it put forth 
abundantly things that here at home we 
find it harder to raise than homely grass 
and oats. The ground was thickly clad 
with flowers of delightful hues ;’ pyramids 
of snow or rose-color bordered the track ; 
vellow and crimson stars bejeweled the 
ground; and a thousand bulbous plants 
burst into all imaginable colors, and 
spread a rainbow carpet to the foot of 
the violet hills: and all this glowed and 
gleamed and glittered in a sun shining 
with incredible brightness and purity of 
light, but, somehow, without giving a 
headache, or making the air sultry. 

Christopher fell to gathering flowers, 
and interrogating the past by means of 
them; for he had studied botany. The 
past gave him back some pitiably vague 
ideas. Hesighed. ‘‘ Never mind,’’ said 
he to Dick, and tapped his forehead: “it 
is here: it is only locked up.’’ 

“All right,’? said Dick: “nothing is 
lost when you know where ’tis.”’ 

“This is a beautiful country,’ sug- 
gested Christopher. ‘‘It is all flowers. 
It is like the garden of—the garden of— 
Locked up.” 

“It is de—light—ful,’’ replied the self- 
compelled optimist sturdily. But here 
nature gave way. He was obliged to 
relieve his agricultural bile by getting 
into the cart, and complaining to his 
sister. ‘*’ Twill take us all our time to 
cure him. He have been bepraising this 
here soil, which it is only fit to clean the 
women’s kettles. *Twouldn’t feed three 
larks to an acre, I know; no, nor half so 
many.’ 

‘* Poor soul! Mayhap the flowers have 
took his eye. Sit here a bit, Dick. -I 
want to talk to you about a many 
things.”’ ; 


’ 
332 


While these two were conversing, Uca- 
tella, who was very fond of Phoebe, but 
abhorred wagons, stepped out, and 
stalked by the side like an ostrich, a 
camelopard, or a Taglioni; nor did the 
effort with which she subdued her stride 
to the pace of the procession appear: it 
was the poetry of walking. Christopher 
admired it a moment; but the noble ex- 
panse tempted him, and he strode forth 
like a giant, his lungs inflating in the 
glorious air, and soon left the wagon far 
behind. 

The consequence was, that when they 
came to a halt, and Dick and Phoebe got 
out to release and water the cattle, there 
was Christopher’s figure retiring into 
space. 

“Hanc rem egre tulit Phoebe,’’? as my 
old friend Livy would say. ‘‘ Oh, dear ! 
oh, dear! If he strays so far from us, he 
will be eaten up at nightfall by jackals 
or lions or something. One of you must 
go after him.’’ 

‘“‘Me go, missy,’’ said Ucatella zeal- 
ously, pleased with an excuse for stretch- 
ing her magnificent limbs. 

‘Ay; but mayhap he will not come 
back with you: will he, Dick? ”’ 

seMhiats he wwill,+ lies xl pa 
wanted to look after the cattle. 

‘Yuke, my girl,’’ said Phoebe, “listen. 
He has been a good friend of ours in 
trouble ; and now he is not quite right 
here. 
sure and bring him back, or keep him till 
we come.”’ 

‘““Me bring him back alive, certain 
sure,’’ said Ucatella, smiling from ear 
to ear. She started with a sudden glide, 
like a boat taking the water, and ap- 
peared almost to saunter away, so 
easy was the motion; but, when you 
looked at the ground she was covering, 
the stride, or glide, or whatever it was, 
was amazing— 


Dick 


‘‘She seemed in walking to devour the way.” 


Christopher walked fast, but nothing 
like this; and as he stopped at times to 
botanize, and gaze at the violet hills, and 
interrogate the past, she came up with 


So be very kind to him; but be 


WORKS OF OHARLES READE. 


him about five miles from the halting- 
place. 

She laid her hand quietly on his shoul- 
der, and said with a broad, genial smile 
and a musical chuckle, ‘‘ Ucatella come 
for you. Missy want to speak you.”’ 

‘Qh! very well;’’ and he turned back | 
with her directly; but she took him by 
the hand to make sure ; and they marched 
back peaceably, in silence, and hand in 
hand. But he looked and looked at her ; 
and at last he stopped dead short, and 
said a little arrogantly, ‘‘Come! I know 
you. You are not locked up:” and he 
inspected her pointblank. She stood like 
an antique statue, and faced the examina- 
tion. “You are ‘the noble savage,’ ”’ 
said he, having concluded his _ inspec- 
tion. 

‘“Nay,’’ said she. 
maid.’’ 

““The housemaid ! ”’ 

‘Iss, the housemaid, Ucatella? So 
come on.’? And she drew him along, 
sore perplexed. 

They met the cavalcade a mile from 
the halting-place ; and Phoebe apologized 
a little to Christopher. “I hope you’ll 
excuse me, Sir,’’ said she; ‘‘ but Iam just 
for all the world like a hen with her 
chickens: if but one strays, I’m all in a 
flutter till I get him back.”’ 

“‘Madam,’’ said Christopher, “‘I am 
very unhappy at the way things are 
locked up. Please tell me truly, is this 
‘the housemaid,’ or the ‘ noble savage ?’ ”’ 

“Well, she is both, if you go to that, 
and the best creature ever breathed.”’ 

‘Then she zs the ‘noble savage.’ ”’ 

‘““Ay, so they call her, because she is 
black.’’ 

‘<Then, thank Heaven !’’ said Chris- 
topher, ‘‘ the past is not all locked up.”’ 


““I be the house- 


That afternoon they stopped at an inn. 
But Dick slept in the cart. At three in 
the morning they took the road again, 
and creaked along supernaturally loud 
under a purple firmament studded with 
huge stars, all bright as moons, that lit 
the way quite clear, and showed black 
things innumerable flitting to and fro. 
these made Phoebe shudder, but were no 


A SIMPLETON. 


333 


doubt harmless; still Dick carried his | and then the sun leaped into the sky, and, 


double rifle, and a revolver in his belt. 

They made a fine march in the cool, 
until some shght mists gathered, and 
then they halted, and breakfasted near 
a silvery kloof, and watered the cattle. 
While thus employed, suddenly a golden 
tinge seemed to fall like a lash on the va- 
pors of night ; they scudded away direct- 
ly, as jackals before the lion. The stars 
paled ; and with one incredible bound the 
mighty sun leaped into the horizon, and 
rose into the sky. In a moment all the 
lesser lamps of heaven were out, though 
late so glorious; and there was nothing 
but one vast vaulted turquoise, and a 
great flaming topaz mounting with eter- 
nal ardor to its center. 

This did not escape Christopher. 

“What is this?’’ said he. “ No twi- 
light. The tropics!’’ He managed to 
dig that word out of the past in a mo- 
ment. 

At ten o’clock the sun was so hot that 
they halted, and let the oxen loose till 
sundown. Then they began to climb 
the mountains. 

The way was steep and rugged; in- 
deed, so rough in places, that the cattle 
had to jump over the holes, and as the 
wagon could not jump So cleverly, it 
jolted appallingly, and many a scream 
issued forth. . 

Near the summit, when the poor beasts 
were dead beat, they got into clouds and 
storms ; and the wind rushed howling at 
them through the narrow pass with such 
fury, it flattened the horses’ ears, and 
bade fair to sweep the whole cavalcade to 
the plains below. 

Christopher and Dick walked close be- 
hind under the lee of the wagon. Chris- 
topher said in Dick’s ear, ‘‘ D’ye hear 
that? Time to reef topsails, captain.’’ 

“It is time to do something,’’ said 
Dick. He took advantage of a jutting 
rock, drew the wagon half behind it and 
across the road, propped the wheels with 
stones ; and they all huddled to leeward, 
man and beast indiscriminately. 

“Ah!” said Christopher approvingly : 
‘‘we are lying to—a very proper course.”’ 

They huddled and shivered three hours; 


lo! a transformation scene. The cold 
clouds were first rosy fleeces, then golden 
ones, then gold-dust, then gone: the rain 
was big diamonds, then crystal sparks, 
then gone: the rocks and the bushes 
sparkled with gem-like drops, and shone 
and smiled. 

The shivering party bustled, and toasted 
the potent luminary in hot coffee; for 
Phoebe’s wagon had a stove and chimney; 
and then they yoked their miscellaneous 
cattle again, and breasted the hill. With 
many a jump and bump and jolt, and 
scream from inside, they reached the 
summit, and looked down on a vast slope 
flowering but arid—a region of gaudy 
sterlity. 

The descent was more tremendous than 
the ascent; and Phoebe got out, and told 
Christopher she would liever cross the 
ocean twice than this dreadful mountain 
once. — | 

The Hottentot with the reins was now 
bent like a bow all the time, keeping the 
cattle from flowing diverse over preci- 
pices, and the Caffre with his kambok 
was here and there and everywhere, his 
whip flicking like a lancet, and cracking 
like a horse-pistol, and the pair vied like 
Apollo and Pan, not which could sing 
sweetest, but swear loudest. Having 
the lofty hill for some hours between 
them and the sun, they bumped and 
jolted, and stuck in mud-holes, and 
flogged and swore the cattle out of them 
again, till at last they got to the bottom, 
where ran a turbid kloof, or stream. It 
was fordable; but the recent rains had 
licked away the slope: so the existing 
bank was two feet above the stream. 
Little recked the demon drivers or the 
parched cattle: in they plunged promis- 
cuously, with a flop like thunder, followed 
by an awful splashing. The wagon stuck 
fast in the mud, the horses tied them- 
selves in a knot, and rolled about in 
the stream, and the oxen drank, imper- 
turbable. 

“Oh the salt! the salt!’’ screamed 
Phoebe; and the rocks re-echoed her 
lamentations. 

The wagon was inextricable, the cattle 


334 


done up, the savages lazy : so they stayed 
for several hours. Christopher botan- 
ized, but not alone. Phoebe drew Uca- 
tella apart, and explained to her, that, 
when a man is a little wrong in the head, 
it makes a child of him. ‘‘So,’’ said she, 
“you must think he is your child, and 
never let him out of your sight.” 

‘ All right,’’ said the sable Juno; who 
spoke English ridiculously well, and 
rapped out idioms, especially ‘ Come 
on,’’ and “ All right.’ 

About dusk what the drivers had fore- 
seen, though they had not the sense to 
explain it, took place: the kloof dwindled 
to a mere gutter, and the wagon stuck 
high and dry. Phoebe waved her hand- 
kerchief to Ucatella. Ucatella, who had 
dogged Christopher about four hours 
without a word, now took his hand, and 
said, ‘My child, missy wants us; come 
on;’’ and so led him unresistingly. 

The drivers, flogging like devils, cursing 
like troopers, and yelling like hyenas gone 
mad, tried to get the wagon off; but it 
was fast as a rock. Then Dick and the 
Hottentot put their shoulders to one 
wheel, and tried to pry it up, while the 
Caffre encouraged the cattle with his 
thong. Observing ° this, Christopher 
went in, with his sable custodian at 
his heels, and heaved at the other em- 
bedded wheel. The wagon was lifted 
directly, so that the cattle tugged it 
out, and they got clear. On examina- 
tion, the salt had just escaped. 

Says Ucatella to Phoebe a little osten- 
tatiously, ‘‘ My child is strong and use- 
ful; make little missy a good slave.”’ 

«A slave! Heaven forbid!’ said 
Phoebe. ‘‘He’ll be a father to us aill, 
once he gets his head back; and I do 
think it is coming—but very slow.’’ 


The next three days offered the ordi- 
nary incidents of African travel, but noth- 
ing that operated much on Christopher’s 
mind, which is the true point of this nar- 
rative; and, as there are many admir- 
able books of African travel, it is the 
more proper I should confine myself to 
what may be called the relevant inci- 
dents of the journey. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


On the sixth day from Cape Town they 
came up with a large wagon stuck ina 
mudhole. There was quite a party of 
Boers, Hottentots, Caffres, round ' it, 
armed with whips, kamboks, and oaths, 
lashing and cursing without intermis- 
sion, or any good effect ; and there were 
the wretched beasts straining in vain at> 
their choking yokes, moaning with an- 
guish, trembling ‘with terror, their poor 
mild eyes dilated with agony and fear ; 
and often, when the blows of the cruel 
kamboks cut open their bleeding flesh, 
they bellowed to Heaven their miserable | 
and vain protest against this devil’s 
work. . 

Then the past opened its stores, and 
lent Christopher a word. 

‘* BARBARIANS !’’ he roared, and seized 
a gigantic Caffre by the throat, just as 
his kambok descended for the hundredth 
time. There was a mighty struggle, as 
of two Titans; dust flew round the com- 
batants in a cloud; a whirling of big 
bodies, and down they both went with 
an awful thud, the Saxon uppermost, 
by Nature’s law. 

The Caffre’s companidns, amazed at 
first, began to roll their eyes and draw 
a knife or two; but Dick ran forward, 
and said, ‘‘ Don’t hurt him: he is wrong 
here.’ 

This representation pacified them more 
readily than one might have expected. 
Dick added hastily, ‘‘ We'll get you out 
of the hole owr way, and cry quits.”’ 

The proposal was favorably received ; 
and the next minute Christopher and 
Ucatella at one wheel, and Dick and the 
Hottentot at the other, with no other 
help than two pointed iron bars bought 
for their shepherds, had effected what 
sixteen oxen could not. To do this Dick 
Dale had bared his arm to the shoulder. 
It was a stalwart limb, like his sister’s ; 
and he now held it out all swollen and 
corded, and slapped it with his other 
hand. ‘‘ Look’ee here, you chaps,’’ said 
he. ‘‘The worst use a man can put that 
there to is to go cutting out a poor 
beast’s heart for not doing more than 
he can. You are good fellows, you 
Caffres; but I think you have sworn 


a 


never to put your shoulder to a wheel. 
But, bless your poor silly hearts! a little 


| Strength put on at the right place is 


better than a deal at the wrong.’’ 

‘¢You hear that, you Caffre chaps ?’’ 
inquired Ucatella a little arrogantly—for 
a Caffre. 

The Caffres, who had stood quite silent 
to imbibe these remarks, bowed their 
heads with all the dignity and politeness 
of Roman senators, Spanish grandees, 
etc.; and one of ethe said party replied 
gravely, ‘“‘The words of the white man 
are always wise.”’ 

‘¢ And his arm blanked* strong,’’ said 
Christopher’s late opponent, from whose 
mind, however, all resentment had van- 
ished. 

Thus spake the Caffres, yet to this day 
never hath a man of all their tribe put 
his shoulder to a wheel, so strong is cus- 
tom in South Africa, probably in all 
Africa; since 1 remember St. Augustin 
found it stronger than he liked at Car- 
thage. 

Ucatella went to Phoebe, and _ said, 
“Missy, my child is good and brave.”’ 

‘¢Bother you and your child!” said 
poor Pheebe. ‘To think of his flying at 
a giant like that, and you letting of him. 
I’m all of a tremble from head to foot; ’’ 
and Phoebe relieved herself with a cry. 

‘Oh, missy !’’ said Ucatella. 

«“There, never mind me. Do go and 
look after your child, and keep him out 
of more mischief. I wish we were safe at 
Dale’s Kloof, I,do.’’ 

Ucatella complied, and went Batataeine 
with Dr. Staines; but that gentleman, in 
the course of his scientific researches into 
camomile flowers and _ blasted heath, 
which were all that lovely region 
afforded, suddenly succumbed, and 
stretched out his limbs, and said sleep- 
ily, ‘‘ Good-night, U—cat ’’—and was off 
into the land of Nod. 

The wagon, which, by the way, had 
passed the larger but slower vehicle, 
found him fast asleep, and Ucatella 


9? 


-standing by him, as ordered, motionless 


and grand. 


*T take this very useful expression from a de- 
lightful volume by Mr. Boyle. 


SIMPLETON. 


335d 


“Oh, dear! what now!’ said Pheebe; 
but being a sensible woman, though in 
the hen and chickens line, she said, ‘‘ ’Tis 
the fighting arfd the excitement. *T will 
do him more good than harm, I think ; ’’ 
and she had him bestowed in the wagon, 
and never disturbed him night nor day. 
He slept thirty-six hours at a stretch ; 
and, when he awoke, she noticed a 
slight change in his eye. He looked 
at her with an interest he had not 
shown before, and said, ‘‘Madam, I 
know you.” 

‘Thank God for that !’’ said Phoebe. 

“You kept a little eyerep in the other 
world.’’ 

Phoebe opened her eyes with some little 
alarm. 

“You understand—the world that is 
locked up—for the present.’’ 

“Well, sir, sol did, and sold you milk 
and butter. Don’t you mind ? ”’ 

‘“No—the milk and butter—they are 
locked up.’’ 

The country became wilder, the signs 
of life miserably sparse; about every 
twenty miles the farm-house or hut ofa 
degenerate Boer, whose children and 
slaves pigged together, and all ran jost- 
ling, and the mistress screamed in her 
shrill Dutch, and the Hottentots all 
chirped together, and confusion reigned - 
for want of method: often they went 
miles, and saw nothing but a hut or two, 
with a nude Hottentot eating flesh burned 
a little, but not cooked, at the door; and 
the kloofs became deeper and more turbid ; 
and Phoebe was in agony about her salt ; 
and Christopher advised her to break it. 
in big lumps, and hang it all about the 
wagon in sacks; and she did, and Uca- 
tella said profoundly, ‘‘ My child is wise ; ”’ 
and they began to draw near home, and 
Phoebe to fidget; and she said to Chris- 
topher, ‘Oh, dear! I hope they are all 
alive and well: once you leave home, you 
don’t know what may have happened by 
then you come back. One comfort, I’ve 
got Sophy: she is very dependable, and 
no beauty, thank my stars !’’ 

That night, the last day they had to 
travel, was cloudy for a wonder, and 
they groped with lanterns. 


336— 


Ucatella and her child brought up the 
rear. Presently there was a light patter- 
ing behind them. The swift-eared Uca- 
tella clutched Christopher’s armMewanue 
turning round, pointed back, with eye- 
balls white and rolling. There were full 
a dozen animals following them, whose 
bodies seemed colorless as shadows, but 
their eyes little balls of flaming lime- 
light. 

‘‘Gun!’’ said Christie, and gave the 
Caffre’s arm a pinch. She flew to the 
caravan: he walked backward, facing 
the foe. The wagon was halted; and 
Dick ran back with two loaded rifles. In 
his haste he gave one to Christopher, and 
repented at leisure ; but Christopher took 
it, and handled it hke an experienced per- 
son, and said with delight, ‘‘ VOLUNTEER.”’ 
But with this the cautious animals- had 
vanished like bubbles. But Dick told 
Christopher they would be sure to come 
back. He ordered Ucatella into the 
wagon, and told her to warn Pheebe not 
to be frightened if guns should be fired. 
This soothing message brought Phoebe’s 
white face out between the curtains; and 
she implored them to get into the wagon, 
and not tempt Providence. 

“Not till I have got thee a kaross of 
jackal’s fur.” | 

“T’]ll never wear it!’’ said Pheebe, 
violently, to divert him from his pur- 
pose. 

“Time will show,’’ said Dick dryly. 
‘These varmint are on and off like 
shadows, and as cunning as old Nick. 
We two will walk on quite unconcerned 
like; and, as soon as ever the varmint 
are at our heels, you give us the office; 
and we’ll pepper their fur, won’t we, 
doctor ? ”’ 

«We — will — pepper — their fur,”’ 
said Christopher, repeating what to him 
was a lesson in the ancient and venerable 
English tongue. 

So they walked on expectant; and by 
and by the four-footed shadows with 
large lime-light eyes came stealing on ; 
and Phoebe shrieked, and they vanished 
before the men could draw a bead on 
them. 

**Thou’s no use at this work, Phoebe,” 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


said Dick. ‘‘Shut thy eyes, and let us 
have Yuke.”’ 

‘<Tss, master: here I be.’’ 

‘* You can bleat like a lamb; for I’ve 
heard ye.’’ 

‘Iss, master. I bleats beautiful; ”’ 
and she showed snowy teeth from ear 
to ear. 

«Well, then, when the varmint are at 
our heels, draw in thy woolly head, and 
bleat like a young lamb. They won’t 
turn from that, I Know, the vaga- 
bonds.”’ 

Matters being thus prepared, they 
sauntered on; but the jackals were very 
wary. They came like shadows, so de- 
parted—a great many times; but at last, 
being re-enforced, they lessened the dis- 
tance, and got so close that Ucatella 
withdrew her head and bleated faintly 
inside the wagon. The men turned, lev- 
eling their rifles, and found the troop 
within twenty yards of them. They 
wheeled directly ; but the four barrels 
poured their flame, four loud reports 
startled the night, and one jackal lay 
dead aS a stone, another limped behind 
the flying crowd, and one lay kicking. 
He was soon dispatched, and both car- 
casses flung over the patient oxen; and 
good-by, jackals, for the rest of that 
journey. 

Ucatella, with all a Caffre’s love of 
fire-arms, clapped her hands with de- 
hght. ““My ¢child “shoots? loudemeand 
strong,’’ said she. : 

‘Ay, ay,’ replied Phofbe: “‘ they are 
all alike. Wherever there’s men, look 
for quarreling and firing off. We had 
only to sit quiet in the wagon.”’ 

“« Ay,’’ said Dick, ‘‘ the cattle especially 
—for it is them the varmint were after— 
and let *em eat my Hottentots.’’ 

At this picture of the cattle inside the 
wagon, and the jackals supping on cold 
Hottentot alongside, Phoebe, who had no 
more humor than a cat, but a heart of 
gold, shut up and turned red with con- 
fusion at her false estimate of the recent 
transaction in fur. | 

When the sun rose, they found them- 
selves in a tract somewhat less arid and 
inhuman; and at last, at the rise of a 


y A SIMPLETON. 


gentle slope, they saw, half a mile before 
them, a large farmhouse partly clad with 
creepers, and a little plot of turf, the fruit 
of eternal watering; item, a flower bed; 
item, snow-white palings; item, an air 
of cleanliness and neatness_ scarcely 
known to those dirty descendants of 
clean ancestors, the Boers. At some 
distance a very large dam glittered in 
the sun, and a troop of snow-white sheep 
were watering at it. 

“England !’’ cried Christopher. 

“Ay, sir,’”? said Phoebe; ‘‘as nigh as 
man can make it.’? But soon she began 
to fret. ‘‘Oh, dear! where are they all? 
If it was me, I’d be at the door looking 
out. Ah, there goes Yuke to rouse them 
Upes 

“‘“Come, Phoebe, don’t you fidget,”’ 
said Dick kindly. ‘* Why, the lazy lot 
are scarce out of their beds by this 
time.”’ 

“*More shame for ’em! If they were 
away from me, and coming home, I 
should be at the door day and night, lI 
know. Ah!”’’ 

She uttered a scream of delight; for 
just then out came. Ucatella, with little 
Tommy on her shoulder, and danced 
along to meet her. As she came close, 
she raised the chubby child high in the 
air, and he crowed ; and then she lowered 
him to his mother, who rushed at him, 
seized and devoured him with a hundred 
inarticulate cries of joy and love unspeak- 
able. 

‘““NATURE!’’ said Christopher, dog- 
matically, recognizing an old acquaint- 
ance, and booking it as one more conquest 

ee 
gained over the past. But there was too 
much excitement over the cherub to 
attend to him. So he watched the 
women gravely, and began to moralize 
with all his might. ‘‘ This,”’ said he, “‘is 
what we used to call maternal love; and 
all animals had it, and that is why the 
noble savage went for him. It was very 
good of you, Miss Savage,”’ said the poor 
soul sententiously. 

“Good of her!’’ cried Pheebe. ‘‘ She 
is all goodness. Savage! Find me a 
Dutchwoman like her. I'll give her a 
good cuddle for it.”” And she took the 


307 


Caffre round the neck and gave her a 
hearty kiss, and made the little boy kiss 
her too. 

At this moment out came a colly-dog, 
hunting Ucatella by scent alone, which 
process landed him headlong in the group.’ 
He gave loud barks of recognition, fawned 
on Phoebe and Dick, smelled poor Chris- 
topher, gave a growl of suspicion, and 
lurked about, squinting, dissatisfied, and 
lowering his tail. 

“Thou art wrong, lad, for once,’’ said 
Dick; ‘‘ for he’s an old friend, and a good 
one.” 

“‘ After the dog, perhaps some Chris- 
tian will come to welcome us,”’ said poor 
Phoebe... 

Obedient to the wish, out walked 
Sophy, the English nurse, a scragg 
woman, with a very cocked nose and thin 
pinched lips, and an air of respectability 
and pertness mingled. She dropped a 
short courtesy, shot the glance of a basi- 
lisk at Ucatella, and said stiffly, “‘ You 
are welcome home, ma’am.’’ Then she 
took the little boy as one having author- 
ity. Not that Phoebe would have sur- 
rendered him, but just then Mr. Falcon 
strolled out with a cigar in his mouth ; 
and Phoebe, with her heart in her mouth, 
flew to meet him. There was a rapturous 
conjugal embrace, followed by mutual in- 
quiries, and the wagon drew up at the 
door. Then, for the first time, Falcon 
observed Staines, saw at once he was a 
gentleman, and touched his hat to him, 
to which Christopher responded in kind, 
and remembered he had done so in the 
Jocked-up past. 

Phoebe instantly drew her husband 
apart by the sleeve. “‘‘Who do you 
think that is? You'll never guess. ’Tis 
the great doctor that saved Dick’s life in 
England with cutting of his throat. But 
oh, my dear, he is not the man he was. 
He is afflicted. Out of his mind partly. 
Well, we must cure him, and square 
the account for Dick. I’m a proud 
woman at finding him, and bringing 
him here to make him all right again, I 
can tell you. Oh! I am happy, I am 
happy. Little did I think to be so hap- 
py as lam. And, my dear, [have brought 


338 


you a whole sackful of newspapers old and 
new.”’ | 

‘“That is a good girl. 
little more about hin. 
name ?”’ 

‘¢ Christie.’’ 

<< Dre Christie/n 7 

“No doubt. He wasn’t an apothecary 
or a chemist, you may be sure, but a high 
doctor, and the cleverest ever was or ever 
will be. And isn’t it sad, love, to see him 
brought down so? My heart yearns for 
the poor man: and then his wife—the 
sweetest, loveliest creature you ever — 
oh !’’ 

Phoebe stopped very short, for she re- 
membered something all of a sudden; 
nor did she ever again give Falcon a 
chance of knowing that the woman whose 
presence had so disturbed him was this 
Dr. Christie’s wife. ‘*‘ Curious ! ”’ thought 
she to herself, ‘“‘ the world to be so large, 
and yet so small.”? Then aloud, ‘ They 
are unpacking the wagon; come, dear. 
I don’t think I have forgotten anything 
of yours. There’s cigars and tobacco, 
and powder and shot and bullets, and 
everything to make you comfortable, as 
my duty ’tis; and—oh, but I’m a happy 
woman !”’ 

Hottentots big and little clustered about 
the wagon. Treasure after treasure was 
delivered with cries of delight. The dogs 
found out it was a joyful time, and barked 
‘about the wheeled treasury; and the place 
did not quiet down till sunset. 

A plain but tidy little room was given 
to Christopher; and he slept there like a 
top. Next morning his nurse called him 
up to help her water the grass. She led 
the way with a tub on her head, and two 
buckets in it. She took him to the dam: 
when she got there, she took out the 
buckets, left one on the bank, and gave 
the other to Christie. She then went 
down the steps till the water was up to 
her neck, and bade Christie fill the tub. 
He poured eight bucketfuls in. Then she 
came slowly out, straight as an arrow, 
balancing this tub fullon her head. Then 
she held out her hands for the two buck- 
ets. Christie filled them, wondering, and 
gave them to her. She took them like 


But tell me a 
What ms: his 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


toy buckets, and glided slowly home with 
this enormous weight, and never spilled 
a drop. Indeed, the walk was ' more 
smooth and noble than ever, if possible. 

When she reached the house, she hailed 
a Hottentot; and it cost the man and 
Christopher a great effort of strength to 
lower her tub between them. 

“What a vertebral column you must 
have !’’ said Christopher. 

“You must not speak bad words, my 
child,’’? said she. ‘‘ Now you water the 
grass and the flowers.’’ She gave him a 
watering-pot, and watched him mater- 
nally, but did not put a hand to it. She 
evidently considered this part of the busi- 
ness as child’s play, and not a fit exercise 
of her powers. 

It was only by drowning that little 
oasis twice a day that the grass was kept 
green and the flowers alive. 

She found him other jobs in course of 
the day; and, indeed, he was always 
helping somebody or other, and became 
quite ruddy, bronzed, and plump of cheek, 
and wore a strange look of happiness, 
except at times when he got apart and 
tried to recall the distant past. Then he 
would knit his brow and look perplexed 
and sad. | 

They were getting quite used to him, 
and he to them, when one day he did not 
come in to dinner. Phoebe sent out for 
him; but they could not find him. 

The sun set. Phoebe became greatly 
alarmed ; and even Dick was anxious. 

They all turned out with guns and 
dogs, and hunted for him beneath the 
Stars. | 

Just before daybreak, Dick Dale saw 
a fire sparkle by the side of a distant 
thicket. He went to it; and there was 
Ucatella seated, calm and grand as 
antique statue, and Christopher lying 
by her side with a shawl thrown over 
him. As Dale came hurriedly up, she 
put her finger to her lips and said, ‘‘ My 
child sleeps. Do not wake him. When 
he sleeps, he hunts the past, as Colly 
hunts the springbok.”’ 

“‘Here’sa go!’’ said Dick. Then hear-: 
ing a chuckle, he looked up, and was 
aware of a comical appendage to the 


A SIMPLETON. 339 


scene. There hung, head downward, 
from a branch, a Caffre boy, who was 
in fact the brother of the stately Uca- 
tella, only went further into antiquity 
for his models of deportment; for, as 
she imitated the antique marbles, he 
reproduced the habits of that epoch 
when man roosted, and was arboreal. 
Wheel somersaults, and, above all, 
Swinging head. downward from a 
branch, were the sweetness of his ex- 
istence.’’ ; 

“Oh! you are there, are you?’’ said 
Dick. 

“Iss,’’ said Ucatella. 
Tim found my child.’’ 

“ Well,’’? said Dick, ‘‘he has chosen a 
nice place. This is the clump the last 
lion came out of: at least they say so. 
For my part, I never saw an African lion. 
Falcon says they’ve all took ship, and 
gone to England. However, I shall stay 
here with my rifle till daybreak. ‘Tis 
tempting Providence to lie down on the 
skirt of the wood for Lord knows what 
to jump out on ye unawares.”’ 

Tim was sent home for Hottentots; 
and Christopher was carried home, still 
sleeping, and laid on his own bed. 

He slept twenty-four hours more ; and, 
when he was fairly awake, a sort of mist 
seemed to clear away in places, and he 
remembered things at random. He re- 
membered being at sea on the raft with 
the dead body: that picture was quite 
vivid to him. Heremembered, too, being 
in the hospital, and meeting Phoebe, and 
every succeeding incident; but, as re- 
spected the more distant past, he could 
not recall it by any effort of his will. 
His mind could only go into that remoter 
past by material stepping-stones; and 
what stepping-stones he had about him 
here led him back to general knowledge, 
but not to his private history. 

In this condition he puzzled them all 
strangely at the farm: his mind was al- 
ternately so clear, and so obscure. He 
would chat with Phoebe, and sometimes 
give her a good practical hint, but the 
next moment helpless for want of memory 
—that great faculty without which judg- 
ment cannot act, having no material. 


‘*'Tim good boy. 


After some days of this he had another 
great sleep. It brought him back the 
distant past in chapters—his wedding- 
day, his wife’s face and dress upon that 
day, his parting with her, his whole voy- 
age out; but, strange to say, it swept 
away one-half of that which he had re- 
covered at his last sleep, and he no longer 
remembered clearly how he came to be at 
Dale’s Kloof. 

Thus his mind might be compared to 
one climbing a slippery place, who gains 
a foot or two, then slips back, but, on the 
whole, gains more than he loses. 

He took a great liking to Falcon. That 
gentleman had the art of pleasing, and 
the tact never to offend. 

Falcon affected to treat the poor 
soul’s want of memory as a common in- 
firmity; pretended he was himself very 
often troubled in the same way, and ad- 
vised him to read the newspapers. ‘‘ My 
good wife,’’ said he, ‘‘ has brought mea 
whole file of the Cape Gazette. Id read 
them if | was you. The deuce is in it, if 
you don’t rake up something or other.’’ 

Christopher thanked him warmly for 
this: he got the papers to his own little 
room, and had always one or two in his 
pocket for reading. At first he found a 
good many hard words that puzzled him ; 
and he borrowed a. pencil of Phoebe, and 
noted them down. Strange to say, the 
words that puzzled him were always 
common words, that his unaccountable 
memory had forgotten: a hard word— 
he was sure to remember that. 

One day he had to ask Falcon the 
meaning of ‘‘ spendthrift.’* Falcon told 
him briefly. He could have illustrated 
the word by a striking example; but he 
did not. He added, in his polite way, 
‘No fellow can understand all the words 
in a newspaper. Now, here’s a word in 
mine, ‘ Anemometer: ’ who the deuce can 
understand such a word ? ”’ 

‘“Oh, that is a common word enough,”’ 
said poor Christopher. ‘‘It means a 
machine for measuring the force of the 
wind.”’ 

“Oh, indeed!’’ said Falcon; but did 
not believe a word of it. 

One sultry day Christopher had a vio- 


340 WORKS 
lent headache, and complained to Uca- 
tella. She told Phoebe, and they bound 
his brows with a wet handkerchief, and 
advised him to keep in-doors. He sat 
down in the coolest part of the house, 
and held his head with his hands, for it 
seemed as if it would explode into two 
great fragments. — 

All in a moment the sky was overcast 
with angry clouds, whirling this way and 
that. Huge drops of hail pattered down, 
and the next minute came a tremendous 
flash of lightning, accompanied, rather 
than followed, by a crash of thunder close 
over their heads. 

This was the opening. Down came a 
deluge out of clouds that looked moun- 
tains of pitch, and made the day night 
but for the fast and furious strokes of 
lightning that fired the air. The scream 
of wind and awful peals of thunder com- 
pleted the horrors of the scene. 

In the midst of this, by what agency lL 
know no more than science or a sheep 
does, something went off inside of Chris- 
topher’s head, like a pistol shot. He gave 
a sort of scream and dashed out into the 
weather. 

Phebe heard his scream and his flying 
footstep, and uttered an ejaculation of 
fear. The whole household was alarmed, 
and, under other circumstances, would 
have followed him ; but you could not see 
ten yards. 

A chill sense of impending misfortune 
settled on the house. Phoebe threw her 
apron over her head, and rocked in her 
chair. 

Dick himself looked very grave. 

Ucatella would have tried to follow 
him; but Dick forbade her. ‘“’Tis no 
use,’’ Said he. ‘‘ When it clears, we that 
be men will go for him.”’ 

“‘“Pray Heaven you may find him 
alive.’’ 

“T don’t think but what we shall. 
There’s nowhere he can fall down to hurt 
himself, nor yet drown himself, but our 
dam; and he has not gone that way. 
But—”’ 

“* But what ? ’’ 1 

‘‘TIf we do find him, we must take him 
back to Cape Town, before he does him- 


OF CHARLES READE. 


self, or Some one a mischief. Why, Phoebe, 
don’t you see the man has gone raving 
mad ? ”’ 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


THE electrified man rushed out into the 
storm ; but hescarcely felt it in his body: 
the effect on his mind overpowered hail- 
stones. The lightning seemed to light 
up the past; the mighty explosions of 
thunder seemed cannon-strokes knocking: 
down a wall, and letting in his whole 
life. | 

Six hours the storm raged; and before 
it ended he had recovered nearly his 
whole past. Except his voyage with 
Capt. Dodd—that he never recovered— 
and the things that happened to him in 
the hospital before he met Phoebe Falcon 
and her brother; and as soon as he had 
recovered his lost memory, his body be- 
gan to shiver at the hail and rain. He 
tried to find his way home, but missed it; _ 
not so much, however, but that he recov- 
ered it aS Soon aS it began to clear; and, 
just as they were coming out to look for 
him, he appeared before them, dripping, 
shivering, very pale and worn, with the 
handkerchief still about his head. 

At sight of. him, Dick slipped back 
to his sister, and said rather roughly, 
‘‘There now, you may leave off crying: 
he is come home; and to-morrow I take 
him to Cape Town.”’ 

Christopher crept in, a dismal, sinister 
figure. 

‘¢ Qh, sir!’’ said Phoebe, ‘‘ wasthis a 
day for a Christian to be out in? How 
could you go and frighten us so? ”’ 

‘‘Forgive me, madam,”’ said Chris- 
topher humbly. ‘‘I was not myself.” 

‘‘'The best thing you can do now is to 
go to bed, and let us send you up some- 
thing warm.”’ 

“You are very good,’’ said Chris- 
topher, and retired with the air of one 
too full of great amazing thoughts to 
gossip. 


A SIMPLETON. 


He slept thirty hours at a stretch ; and 
then, awaking in the dead of night, he 
saw the past even more clear and vivid. 
He lighted his candle, and began to 
grope in the Cape Gazette. As to 
dates, he now remembered when he had 
sailed from England, and also from Ma- 
deira. Following up this clew, he found 
in the Gazette a notice that H. M. ship 
Amphitrite had been spoken off the 
Cape, and had reported the melancholy 
loss of a promising physician and man 
of science, Dr. Staines. 

The account said every exertion had 
been made to save him, but in vain. 

Staines ground his teeth with rage at 
this. ‘‘ Every exertion ! the false-hearted 
curs! they left me .to drown without one 
manly effort to save me. Curse them, 
and curse all the world !”’ 

Pursuing his researches rapidly, he 
found a much longer account of a raft 
picked up by Captain Dodd, with a white 
man on it and a dead body, the white 
man having on him a considerable sum in 
money and jewels. 

Then a new anxiety chilled him. There 
was not a word to identify him with Dr. 
Staines. The idea had never occurred to 
the editor of the Cape Gazette. Still 
less would it occur to any one in En- 
gland. At this moment his wife must 
Dey  miournin 2.) fornmhiniws oo Poor, s.poor 
Rosa!” 

But perhaps the fatal news might not 
have reached her. 

That hope was dashed away as soon as 
found. Why, these were all old news- 
papers. That gentlemanly man who 
had lent them to him had said so. 

Old! yet they completed the year 1867. 

He now tore through them for the 
dates alone, and soon found they went to 
1868. Yet they were old papers. He 
had sailed in May, 1867. 

‘sMy God !’’ he cried in agony, ‘‘I 
HAVE LOST A YEAR.” 

This thought crushed him. By and by 
he began to carry this awful thought into 
details. ‘‘My Rosa has worn mourning 
for me, and put it off again. Iam dead 
to her and to all the world.”’ 

He wept long and bitterly. 


341 


Those tears cleared his brain still more. 
For all that, he was not yet himself, at 
least I doubt it: his insanity, driven from 
the intellect, fastened one lingering claw 
into his moral nature, and hung on by it. 
His soul filled with bitterness and a de- 
sire to be revenged on mankind for their 
injustice; and this thought possessed 
him more than reason. 

He joined the family at breakfast, and 
never a word all the time. But when he 
got up to go he said in a strange, dogged 
way, as if it went against the grain, 
‘‘God bless the house that succors the 


afflicted !’’ Then he went out to brood 
alone. ° 
*“ Dick. J sald= “Phoebe, & ‘“there’s4; 


change, [ll never part with him: and 
look, there’s Colly following him, that 
never could abide him.”’ 

‘Part with him?’’ said Reginald. “ Of 
course not. He is a gentleman, and they 
are not So common in Africa.”’ 

Dick, who hated Falcon, ignored this 
speech entirely, and said, ‘‘ Well, Phoebe, 
you and Colly are wiser thanlam. Take 
your own way, and,don’t blame me if 
anything happens.”’ 

And soon Christopher paid the penalty 
of returning reason. He suffered all 
the poignant agony a great heart can 
endure. 

‘So this was his reward for his great 
act of self-denial in leaving his beloved 
wife. He had lost his patient; he had 
lost the income from that patient; his 
wife was worse off than before, and had 
doubtless suffered the anguish of a loving 
heart bereaved. His mind, which now 
seemed more vigorous than ever after 
its long rest, placed her before his very 
eyes, pale and worn with grief, in her 
widow’s cap. 

At the picture he cried like the rain. 
He could give her joy by writing; but 
he could not prevent her from suffering 
a whole year of misery. 

Turning this over in connection with 
their poverty, his evil genius whispered, 
‘By this time she has received the six 
thousand pounds for your death. She 
would never think of that: but her 
father has; and there is her comfort 


342 


assured, in spite of the caitiffs who left 
her husband to drown like a dog.”’ 

‘‘T know my Rosa,”’ he thought. “‘She 
has swooned—ah, my poor darling ! — 
‘she has raved, she has wept’’ — he 
wept himself at the thought—“‘‘ she has 
mourned every indiscreet act as if it was 
acrime. Butshe has done all this. Her 
good and loving but shallow nature is 


now at rest from the agonies of bereave- | 


ment, and naught remains but sad and 
tender regrets. She can better endure 
that than poverty, cursed poverty, which 
has brought her and me to this, and is 
the Oy real evil in the world but bodily 
pain.’ 

Then came a eat ea that lasted a 
whole week, and knitted his brows and 
took the color from his cheek; but it 
ended in the triumph of love and hate 
over conscience and common sense. His 
Rosa should not be poor; and he would 
cheat some of those contemptible creat- 
ures called men, who had done him noth- 
ing but injustice, and at last had sacri- 
ficed his life like a rat’s. 

When the struggle was over, and the 
fatal resolution taken, then he became 
calmer, less solitary, and more sociable. 

Pheebe, who was secretly watching him 
with a woman’s eye, observed this change 
in him, and with benevolent intentions 
invited him one day to ride round the 
farm with her. He consented readily. 
She showed him the fields devoted to 
maize and wheat, and then the sheep- 


folds. Tim’s sheep were apparently de- 
serted ; but he was discovered swinging, 
head downward, from the branch of a 


camel-thorn, and, seeing him, it did 
strike one, that, if he had had a tail, he 
would have been swinging by that. 
Phoebe called to him. He never an- 
swered, but set off running to her, and 
landed himself under her nose in a wheel 
somersault. 

‘<T hope you are watching them, Tim,’ 
said his mistress. 

‘‘Iss, missy, always watching ’em.”’ 

‘“Why, there’s one straying toward 
the wood now.’’ 

‘He not go far,”’ said Tim coolly. The 
young monkey stole off a little way, then 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


fell flat, and uttered the cry of a jackal 
with startling precision. Back went 
the sheep to his comrades post-haste ; 
and Tim affected a somersault and a 
chuckle. 

“You area clever boy,’’ said Pheebe. 
‘<So that is how you manage them.’’ 

‘‘Dat one way, missy,”’ said Tim, not 
caring to reveal all his resources at 
once. 

Then Phoebe rode on, and showed 
Christopher the ostrich pan. It was a 
large basin, a form the soil often takes in 
these parts; and in it strutted several 
full grown ostriches and their young, 
bred on the premises. There was a little 
dam of water, and plenty of food about. 
They were herded by.a Caffre infant of 
about six, black, glossy, fat, and clean, 
being in the water six times a day. 

Sometimes one of the older birds would 
show an inclination to stray out of the 
pan. Then the infant rolled after her, 
and tapped her ankles with a wand. She 
instantly came back, but without any 
loss of dignity ; for she strutted with her 
nose in the air, affecting completely to 
ignore the inferior little animal, that was 
nevertheless controlling her movements. 
‘‘'There’s a farce,’ said Phoebes)** But 
you would not believe the money they 
cost me, nor the money they bring me in. 
Grain will not sell here for a quarter its 
value; and we can’t afford to send it to 
Cape Town, twenty days and back: but 
finery, that sells everywhere. I gather 
sixty pounds the year off those 2 DOR fowls’ 
backs—clear profit.’’ 

She showed him the granary, and told 
him there wasn’t such another in Africa. 
This farm had belonged to one of the old 
Dutch settlers, and that breed had been 
going down this many a year. ‘You 
see, sir, Dick and I being English, ‘and 
not downright in want of money, we 
can’t bring ourselves to sell grain to the 
middle-men for nothing : so we store it, 
hoping for better times, that maybe will 
never come. Now I’ll show you how the 
dam is made.”’ 

They inspected the dam all round. 
“This is our best friend of all,’’ said 
she. ‘* Without this the sun would turn 


A SIMPLETON. 


us all to tinder—crops, flowers, beasts, 
and folk.’’ 

‘*Oh, indeed!’”’ said Staines. ‘‘ Then 
it is a pity you have not built it more 
scientifically. I must have a look at 
this.”’ 

«‘ Ay, do, sir, and advise us if you see 
anything wrong. But hark! it is milk- 
ing time. Come and see that.’’ So she 
led the way to some sheds; and there 
they found several cows being milked, 
each by a little calf and a little Hotten- 
tot at the same time, and both fighting 
and jostling each other for the udder. 
Now and then a young cow, unused to 
incongruous twins, would kick impatiently 
at both animals, and scatter them. _ 

“That is their way,’”’ said Pheebe. 
“They have got it into their silly Hot- 
tentot heads as kye won’t yield their 
milk if the calf is taken away; and it 
is no use arguing with ’em: they will 
have their own way. But they are very 
trusty and honest, poor things. We soon 
found that out. When we came here 
first, it was in a hired wagon, and Hot- 
tentot drivers: so, when we came to 
settle; I made ready for a bit of a 
wrangle. But my maid, Sophy, that 
is nurse now, and a great despiser of 
heathens, she says, ‘Don’t you trouble; 
them nasty ignorant blacks never charges 
more than their due.’ ‘1 forgive ’em,’ 
says I. ‘I wish all white folk was as 
nice.’ However, I did give them a trifle 
over for luck ; and then they got together, 
and chattered something near the door, 
handin hand. ‘La, Sophy,’ says I, ‘ what 
isupnow?’ Saysshe, ‘ They are blessing 
of us. Things is come to a pretty pass 
for ignorant Muslinmen heathen to be 
blessing Christian folk.’—‘ Well,’ says I, 
‘it won’t hurt us any.’—‘ I don’t know,’ 
says she. ‘I don’t want the devil prayed 
over me.’ So she cocked that long nose 
of hers, and followed it in-doors.”’ 

By this time they were near the house ; 
and Phoebe was obliged to come to her 
postscript, for the sake of which, believe 
me, she had uttered every syllable of this 
varied chat. ‘‘ Well, sir,’’ said she, af- 


fecting to proceed without any consider-. 


able change of topic, ‘‘and how do you 


343 


find yourself ? 
past ?”’ 

“‘T have, madam. I remember every 
leading incident of my life.”’ | 

‘‘ And has it made you happier ?”’ said 
Phoebe softly. 

‘‘No,’’ said Christopher gravely. ‘‘Mem- 
ory has brought me misery.”’ 

‘““T feared as much; for you have lost 
your fine color, and your eyes are hollow, 
and lines on your poor brow that were 
not there before. Are you not sorry you 
have discovered the past ? ”’ 

‘““No, Mrs. Falcon. Give me the sov- 
erelgn gift of reason, with all the torture 
it can inflict. I thank God for returning 
memory, even with the misery it brings.’’ 

Phoebe was silent along time : then she 
said in a low, gentle voice, and with the 
indirectness of a truly feminine nature, 
‘*T have plenty of writing-paper in the 
house ; and the post goes south to-mor- 
row, such as ’tis.’’ 

Christopher struggled with his misery, 
and trembled. 

He was silent a long time. 
sald NO.) , Leena her 
should- be dead.’’ 

‘Well, but, sir—take a thought.”’ 

‘“Not a word more, I implore you. I 
am the most miserable man that ever 
breathed.’’ As he spoke, two bitter tears 
forced their way. 

Phoebe cast a look of pity on him, and 
said no more; but she shook her head. 
Her plain common-sense revolted. 

However, it did not follow he would be 
in the same mind next week : so she was 
in excellent spirits at her protégé’s re- 
covery, and very proud of her cure, and 
celebrated the event with a roaring sup- 
per, including an English ham and a 
bottle of port-wine; and, ten to one, 
that was English too. | 

Dick Dale looked a little incredulous ; 
but he did not spare the ham any the 
more for that. 

After supper, in a pause of the conver- 
sation, Staines turned to Dick, and said 
rather abruptly, ‘‘Suppose that dam of 
yours were to burst, and empty its con- 
tents, would it not be a great misfortune 
to you?”’ 


Have you discovered the 


Then he 
interest that I 


? 


344 WORKS 
‘‘Misfortune, sir! Don’t talk of it. 
Why, it would ruin us, beast and body.” 
‘Well, it will burst if it is not looked 
to.”’ 

‘¢ Dale’s Kloof dam burst !—the biggest 
and strongest for a hundred miles round.”’ 

‘“ You deceive yourself. It is not scien- 
tifically built, to begin; and there is a 
cause at work that will infallibly burst it 
if not looked to in time.’’ 

‘* And what is that, sir? ’’ 

“«“The dam is full of crabs.’’ 

‘‘So ’tis; but what of them ? ”’ 

*“T detected two of them that had per- 
forated the dike from the wet side to the 
dry ; and water was trickling through 
the channel they had made. Now, for 
me to catch two that had come right 
through, there must be a great many at 
work honey-combing your dike. Those 
channels, once made, will be enlarged by 
the permeating water ; and a mere cupful 
of water forced into a dike by the great 
pressure of a heavy column has an expan- 
Sive power quite out of proportion to the 
quantity forced in. Colossal dikes have 
been burst in this way with disastrous 
effects. Indeed, it is only a question of 
time; and I would not guarantee your 
dike twelve hours. It is full, too, with 
the heavy rains.’’ 

‘‘Here’s a go,’’ said Dick, turning pale. 
“Well, if it is to burst, it must.”’ 

“Why so? ‘You can make it safe ina 
few hours. You have got a clumsy con- 
trivance for letting off the excess of 
water: let us go and relieve the dam 
at once of two feet of water. That will 
make it safe for a day or two: and to- 
morrow we will puddle it afresh, and de- 
molish those busy excavators.”’ 

He spoke with such authority and ear- 
nestness, that they all got up from table. 
A horn was blown that soon brought the 
Hottentots; and they all proceeded to 
the dam. With infinite difficulty they 
opened the waste sluice, lowered the 
water two feet, and so drenched the arid 
soil, that in forty-eight hours flowers un- 
known sprung up. | 

Next morning, under the doctor’s or- 
ders, all the black men and boys were 
diving with lumps of stiff clay, and pud- 


OF CHARLES RHADE. 


dling the endangered wall with a thick 
coat of it. This took all the people the 
whole day. 

Next day, the clay wall was carried 
two feet higher; and then the doctor 
made them work on the other side, and 
buttress the dike with supports so enor- 
mous as seemed extravagant to Dick and 
Phoebe ; but after all it was as well to 
be on the safe side, they thought. And 
soon they were sure of it; for the whole 
work was hardly finished, when news 
came in that the dike of a neighboring 
Boer, ten miles off, had exploded like a. 
cannon, and emptied itself in five min- 
utes, drowning the farmyard, and float- 
ing the furniture, but leaving them all 
to perish of drought. And, indeed, the 
Boer’s cart came every day, with empty 
barrels, for some time, to beg water of 
the Dales. Ucatella pondered all this, 
and said her doctor child was wise. 

This brief excitement over, Staines went 
back to his own gloomy thoughts; and 
they scarcely saw him, except at supper- 
time. 

One evening he surprised them all by 
asking if they would add to all’ their 
kindness by lending him a horse and a 
spade and a few pounds, to go to the 
diamond fields. 

Dick Dale looked at his sister. She 
said, ‘‘ We had rather lend them you to 
go home with, sir, if you must leave us. 
But, dear heart, I was half in hopes— 
Dick and I were talking it over only yes- 
terday—that you would go partners like 
with us; ever since you saved the dam.”’ 

‘7 have too little to offer for that, Mrs. 
Falcon, and, besides, ] am driven into a - 
corner. I must make money quickly, or 
not at all: the diamonds are only three 
hundred miles off. For heaven’s sake, 
let me try my luck.’’ 

They tried to dissuade him, and told 
him not one in fifty did any good at it. 

“Ay, but J shall,’’ said he. ‘ Great 
bad luck is followed by great good luck, 
and I feel my turn is come. Not‘that I 
rely on luck. An accident directed my 
attention to the diamond a few years 
ago; and I read a number of prime 
works upon the subject, that told me 


A SIMPLETON. 


things not known to the miners. It is 
clear, from the Cape journals, that they 
are looking for diamonds in the river 
only. Now, [am sure that is a mistake. 
Diamonds, like gold, have their matrix ; 
and it is comparatively few gems that 
get washed into the river. I am confi- 
dent that I shall find the volcanic matrix, 
and perhaps make my fortune in a week 
or two.”’ 

When the dialogue took this turn, 
Reginald Falcon’s cheek began to flush, 
and his eyes to glitter. 

Christopher continued, ‘‘ You who have 
befriended me so will not turn back, I am 
sure, when I have such a chance before 
me; and, as for the small sum of money 


I shall require, I will repay you some 


day, even if—’’ 

‘‘La, sir, don’t talk so. Ifyou put it 
that way, why, the best horse we have, 
and fifty pounds in good English gold, 
they are at your service to-morrow.” 

‘And pick and spade to boot,’’ said 
Dick, ‘‘and a double rifle; for there are 
lions, and Lord knows what, between 
this and the Vaal River.”’ 

‘*God bless you both,’’ said Chris- 
topher. ‘I will start to-morrow.’’ 

© And Ill go with you,’’ said Reginald 
Falcon. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


‘* HEAVEN forbid !’’ said Pheebe. ‘‘ No, 
my dear, no more diamonds for us. We 
never had but one; and it brought us 
trouble.’’ 

“¢ Nonsense, Phoebe !’’ replied Falcon: 
‘it was not the diamond’s fault. You 
know I have often wanted to go there ; 
but you objected. You said you were 
afraid some evil would befall me. But 
now Solomon himself is going to the 
mines, let us have no more of that non- 
sense. We will take our rifles and our 
pistols.”’ 


345 


‘‘'There, there, rifles and pistols! ’’ 
cried Phoebe: ‘‘ that shows.”’ 

‘*And we will be there in a week, stay 
a month, and home with our pockets full 
of diamonds.”’ 

‘‘ And find me dead of a broken heart.’’ 

‘Broken fiddlestick! We have been 
parted longer than that; and yet here we 
are all right.’’ 

‘Ay; but the pitcher that goes too 
often to the well gets broke at last. No, 
Reginald, now I have tasted three years’ 
happiness and peace of mind, I cannot go 
through what I used in England. Oh, 
doctor! have you the heart to part. man 
and wife that have never been a day from 
each other all these years ? ”’ 

‘Mrs. Falcon, I would not do it for all 
the diamonds in Brazil. No. Mr. Fal- 
con, I need hardly say how charmed I 
should be to have your company, but that 
is a pleasure I shall certainly deny my- 
self, after what your. good wife has said. 
I owe her too much to cause her a single 
pang.”’ 

‘* Doctor,’’ said the charming Reginald, 
‘“‘vou are a gentleman, and side with the 
lady. Quite right. It adds to my esteem, 
if possible. Make your mind easy: I will 
go alone. [Lam notafarmer. I am dead 
sick of this monotonous life; and, since I 
am compelled to speak my mind, a little 
ashamed, as a gentleman, of living on my 
wife and brother, and doing nothing for 
myself. So I shall go to the Vaal River, 
and see a little life: here there’s nothing 
but vegetation, and not much of that. 
Not aword more, Pheebe, if you please. 
Iam a good, easy, affectionate husband ; 
but I am a man, and not a child to be 
tied to a woman’s apron-stringss, however 
much I may love and respect her.”’ 

Dick put in his word. ‘‘ Since you are 
so independent, you can walk to the Vaal 
River. )L&can’t ‘spare. a couple joi 
horses.’ 

This hit the Sybarite hard, and he cast 
a bitter glance of hatred at his brother- 
in-law, and fell into a moody silence. 

But when he got Phcebe to himself he 
descanted on her selfishness, Dick’s rude- 
ness, and his own wounded dignity, till 
he made her quite anxious he should have 


346 WORKS OF 
his own way. She came to Staines with 
red eyes, and said, ‘‘ Tell me, doctor, will 
there be any women up there—to take 
care of you? ”’ 

‘Not a petticoat in the place, I believe. 
It is a very rough life; and how Falcon 
could think of leaving you and sweet 
little Tommy, and this life of ee and 
peace and comfort—”’ 

‘* Yet you do leave us, sir.”’ 

‘Tam the most unfortunate man upon 
the earth: Falcon is one of the happiest. 
Would I leave wife and child to go there? 
Ah, me! I am dead to those I love. This 
is my one chance of seeing my darling 
again for many a long year perhaps. 
Oh! I must not speak of her—it unmans 
me. My good, kind friend, I’ll tell you 
what todo. When we are all at supper, 
let a horse be saddled and left in the yard 
forme. I'll bid you all good-night, and 
I’ll put fifty miles between us before 
morning. Even then he need not be told 
Tam gone; he will not follow me.” 

“You are very good, sir,’’ said Phoebe ; 
‘‘but no. Too much has been said. I 
can’t have him humbled by my brother, 
nor any one. Hesavs lam selfish. Per- 
haps lam; though I never was called so. 
I can’t bear he should think me selfish. 
He will go; and so let us have no ill 
blood about it. Since he is to go, of 
course I’d much liever he should go with 
you than by himself. You are sure there 
are no women up there—to take care of— 
you—both? You must be purse-bearer, 
sir, and look to every penny. He is too 
generous when he has got money to 
spend.”’ 

In short, Reginald had played so upon 
her heart, that she now urged the joint 
expedition; only she asked a delay of a 
day or two to equip them, and steel her- 
self to the separation. 

Staines did not share those vague fears 
that overpowered the wife, whose bitter 
experiences were unknown to him; but 
he felt uncomfortable at her condition— 
for now she was often in tears—and he 
said all he could to comfort her; and he 
also advised her how to profit by these 
terrible diamonds, in her way. He 
pointed out to her that her farm lay right 


CHARLES READE. 


in the road to the diamonds; yet the 
traffic all shunned her, passing twenty 
miles to the westward. Said he, ‘*‘ You 
Should profit by all your resources. You 
have wood, a great rarity in Africa. Or- 
der a portable forge; run up a building 
where miners can sleep, another where 
they can feed; the grain you have so 
wisely refused to sell — grind it into 
HouL 

“Dear heart! why, there’s neither 
wind nor water to turn a mill.’’ 

‘‘But there are oxen. Tll show you 
how to make an ox-mill. Send your Cape 
cart into Cape Town for iron lathes, for 
coffee and tea and groceries by the hun- 
dred-weight. The moment you are ready 
—for success depends on the order in 


‘which we act—then prepare great boards, 


and plant them twenty miles south. 
Write or paint on them, very large, ‘ The 
nearest way to the Diamond Mines, 
through Dale’s Kloof, where is excellent 
accommodation for man and beast. Tea, 
coffee, home-made bread, fresh butter, | 
etc., etc.” Do this, and you will soon 
leave off decrying diamonds. ‘This is the 
sure way to coin them. I myself take 
the doubtful way ; but I can’t help it. I 
am adead man; and swift good fortune 
will give me life. You can afford to go 
the slower road and the surer.”’ 

Then he drew her the model of an ox- 
mill, and of a miner’s dormitory, the par- 
titions six feet six apart, so that these 
very partitions formed the bedstead ; the 
bed-sacking being hooked to the uprights. 
He drew his model for twenty bedrooms. 

The portable forge and the ox-mill 
pleased Dick Dale most; but the par- 
titioned bedsteads charmed Phoebe. She 
said, “‘Oh doctor! how can one man’s 
head hold.so many things? If there’sa 
man on earth I can trust my husband 
with, ’tis you. But, if things go cross 
up there, promise me you will come back 
at once and cast in your lot with us. We 
have got money and stock, and you have 
got head-piece: we might do very well 


together. Indeed, indeed, we might. 
Promise me. Oh, do, please promise 
me !’’ 


“*T promise you.”’ 


A SIMPLETON. 


And on this understanding Staines and 
Falcon were equipped with rifles, pick- 
axes, shovels, water-proofs, and full 
saddle-bags, and started with many shak- 
ings of the hand and many tears from 
Pheebe, for the diamond washings. 


CHAPTER XX. 


PH@BE’S tears at parting made Staines 
feel uncomfortable; and he said so. 

** Pooh, pooh !’’ said Falcon: ‘‘ crying 
for nothing dees a woman good.”’ 

Christopher stared at him. 

Falcon’s spirits rose as they proceeded. 
He was like a boy let loose from school. 
His fluency and charm of manner served, 
however, to cheer a singularly dreary 
journey. 

The travelers soon entered on a vast 
and forbidding region that. wearied the 
eye: at their feet a dull rusty carpet of 
dried grass and wild camomile, with pale 
red sand peeping through the burned and 
scanty herbage. On the low mounds, 
that looked like heaps of sifted ashes, 
struggled now and then into sickliness a 
ragged twisted shrub. There were flow- 
ers too, but so sparse, that they sparkled 
vainly in the colorless waste that stretched 
to the horizon. The farmhouses were 
twenty miles apart; and nine out of ten 
were new ones built by the Boers since they 
degenerated into white savages—mere 
huts with domed kitchens behind them. 
In the dwelling-house the whole family 
pigged together, with raw flesh drying 
on the rafters, stinking skins in a corner, 
parasitical vermin of al]l sorts blackening 
the floor, and particularly a small, biting, 
and odoriferous tortoise, compared with 
which the insect a London washer-woman 
brings into your house in her basket is a 
stroke with a feather; and all this with- 
out the excuse of penury; for many of 
these were shepherd kings, sheared four 


347 


thousand fleeces a year, and owned a hun- 
dred horses,and horned cattle. 

These Boers are compelled, by unwritten 
law, to receive travelers, and water their 
cattle. But our travelers, after one or 
two experiences, ceased to trouble them ; 
for, added to the dirt, the men were sul- 
len; the women moody, silent, brainless ; 
the whole reception churlish. Staines de- 
tected in them an uneasy consciousness 
that they had descended, in more ways 
than one, from a civilized race; and the 
superior bearing of a Kuropean seemed to 
remind them what they had been, and 
might have been, and were not: so, after 
an attempt or two, our adventurers 
avoided the Boers, and tried the Caffres. 
They found the savages socially superior ; 
though their moral character does not 
rank high. 

The Caffre cabins they entered were 
caves, lighted only by the door, but de- 
liciously cool, and quite clean; the floors 
of puddled clay or ants’ nests, and very 
clean. On entering these cool retreats, the 
flies, that had tormented them, shirked 
the cool grot, and buzzed off to the near- 
est farm to batten on congenial foulness. 
On the fat, round, glossy babies not a 
speck of dirt: whereas the little Boers 
wére cakes thereof. The Caffre would 
meet them at the door, his clean black 
face all smiles and welcome. The women 
and grown girls would fling a spotless 
handkerchief over their shoulders in a mo- 
ment, and display their snowy teeth in the 
unaffected joy at sight of an Englishman. 

At one of these huts one evening, they 
met with something St. Paul ranks above 
cleanliness: viz., Christianity. A neigh- 
boring lion had just eaten a Hottentot 
faute de mieux ; and these good Caffres 
wanted the Europeans not to go on at 
night, and be eaten fordessert. But they 
could not speak a word of English; and 
pantomimic expression exists in theory 
alone. In vain the women held our travel- 
ers by the coat-tails, and pointed to a 
distant wood. In vain Caffre pére went 
on all-fours, and growled sore. But at 
last a savage youth ran to the kitchen— 
for they never cook in the house—and 
came back with a brand, and sketched on 


348 


the wall of the hut a lion with a mane 
down to the ground, and a saucer-eye not 
loving. The creature’s paw rested on a 
hat and coat, and another fragment or 
two of a European. The rest was fore- 
shortened, or else eaten. 

The picture completed, the females 
looked, approved, and raised a dismal 
howl. 

«* A lion on the road,’’ said Christopher 
gravely. 

Then the undaunted Falcon seized the 
charcoal, and drew an Englishman in a 
theatrical attitude—left foot well forward, 
firing a gun, and alion rolling head over 
heels like a buck rabbit, and blood spurt- 
ing out of a holein his perforated carcass. 

The savages saw, and exulted. They 
were so off their guard as to confound 
representation with fact. They danced 
round the white warrior, and launched 
him to victory. 

« Aha!’ said Falcon, ‘‘I took the shine 
out of their lion, didn’t I? ’’ 

“You did. And once there .was a 
sculptor who showed a lion his marble 
group—a man trampling a lion, extract- 
ing his tongue, and so on; but report says 
it did not convince the lion.”’ 

«“Why, no, a lion isnot an ass. But 
for your comfort, there are no lions in this 
part of the world. They are . myths. 
There were lions in Africa. But now they 
are all at the Zoo. And I wish I was 
there too.”’ 


‘In what character—of a discontented 


animal, with every blessing? They would 
not take you in; too common in England. 
Halloo! this is something new. What 
lots of bushes! Weshould not have much 
chance with a lion here.’’ 

«There are no lions: it is not the Zoo,”’ 
said Falcon ; but he spurred on faster. 

The country, however, did not change 
its feature: bushes and little acacias pre- 
vailed, and presently dark forms began to 
glide across-at intervals. 

The travelers held their breath, and 
pushed on; but at last their horses flagged: 
so they thought it best to stop and light 
a fire, and stand upon their guard. 

They did so; and Falcon sat with his 
rifle cocked, while Staines boiled coffee, 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


and they drank it, and, after two hours’ 
halt pushed on. And at last the bushes 
got more scattered, and they were on the 
dreary plain again. Falcon drew the rein 
with a sigh of relief and they walked their 
horses side by side. ; 

‘* Well, what is become of the lions ?”’ 
said Falcon jauntily.. He turned in his 
saddle, and saw a large animal stealing 
behind them with its belly to the very 
earth, and eyes hot coals. Heuttered an 
eldrich screech, fired both barrels with no 
more aim than a baby, and spurred away 
yelling like a demon. The animal fled 
another way, in equal trepidation at those 
tongues of flame and loud reports; and 
Christopher’s horse reared and plunged, 
and deposited him promptly on the sward: 
but he held the bridle, mounted again, 
and rode after his companion. A stern 
chase is a long chase, and, for that or 
some other reason, he could never catch 
him again till sunrise; being caught, he 
ignored the lioness with cool hauteur. He 
said he had ridden on to find comfortable 
quarters, and craved thanks. 

This was literally the only incident 
worth recording that the companions 
met with in three hundred miles. 

On the sixth day out, toward afternoon, 
they found, by inquiring, they were near 
the diamond washings; and the short 
route was pointed out by anexceptionally 
civil Boer. 

But Christopher’s eye had lighted upon 
a sort of chain of knolls, or little round 
hills, devoid of vegetation; and he told 
Falcon he would like to inspect these be- 
fore going further. 

«¢Oh,’’ said the Boer, “‘ they are not on 
my farm, thank goodness! they are on 
my cousin Bulteel’s; ’’ and he pointed to 
a large white house about four miles dis- 
tant, and quite off the road. Neverthe- 
less, Staines insisted on going to it. But 
first they made up to one of these knolls, 
and examined it. It was about thirty 
feet high, and not a vestige of herbage on 
it: the surface was composed of sand and 
of lumps of gray limestone, very hard, 
diversified with lots of quartz, mica, and 
other old formations. 

Staines got to the topof it with some 


A SIMPLETON. 


difficulty, and examined the surface all 
over. He came down again, and said, 
‘* All these little hills mark hot volcanic 
action—why, they are like boiling earth- 
bubbles—which is the very thing, under 
certain conditions, to turn carbonate of 
lime into diamonds. ‘Now, here is plenty 
of limestone unnaturallyhard ; and, being 
in a diamond country, I can fancy no place 
more likely to be the matrix than these 
earth-bubbles. Let us tether the horses, 
and use our shovels.”’ 

They did so, and found one or two com- 
mon crystals, and some jasper, and a 
piece of chalcedony, all in little bubbles, 
but no diamonds. Falcon said it was 
wasting time. 

Just then the proprietor, a gigantic, 
pasty colonist, came up, with his pipe, 
and stood calmly looking on. Staines 
came down, and made a sort of apology. 
Bulteel smiled quietly, and asked what 
harm they could do him, raking that rub- 
bish. ‘* Rake it all avay, mine vriends,”’ 
said he: ‘‘ ve shall thank you moch.”’ 

He then invited them languidly to his 
house. They went with him; and, as he 
volunteered no more remarks, they ques- 
tioned him, and learned his father had 
been a Hollander, and so had his vrow’s. 
This accounted for the size and compara- 
tive cleanliness of his place. It was stuc- 
coed with the lime of the country outside, 
and was four times as large as the miser- 
able farmhouses of the degenerate Boers. 
For all this, the street door opened on 
the principal room, and that room was 
kitchen and parlor, only very large and 
wholesome. ‘‘ But Lord ’’—as poor dear 
Pepys used to blurt out—‘‘to see how 
some folk understand cleanliness !’’ The 
floor was made of powdered ants’ nests, 
and smeared with fresh cow dung every 
day. Yet these people were the cleanliest 
Boers in the colony. 

The vrow met them, with a snow-white 
collar and cuffs of Hamburg linen; and 
the brats had pasted faces round as pump- 
kins, but shone with soap. The vrow was 
also pasty-faced, but gentle, and wel- 
comed them with a smile, languid but un- 
equivocal. 

The Hottentots took their horses as a 


from the others. 


349 


matter of course. Their guns were put 
inacorner. <A clean cloth was spread ; 
and they saw they were to sup and sleep 
there, though the words of invitation 
were never spoken. 

At supper, sun-dried flesh, cabbage, and 
a savory dish the travelers returned to 
with gusto. Staines asked what it was. 
The vrow told him—locusts. They had 
stripped her garden, and filled her very 
rooms, and fallenin heaps under her walls: 
so she had pressed them, by the million, 
into cakes, had salted them lightly, and 
stored them; and they were excellent 
baked. 

After supper, the accomplished Regi- 
nald, observing a wire guitar, tuned it 
with some difficulty, and so twanged it 
and sang ditties to it, that the flabby 
giant’s pasty face wore a look of dreamy 
content over his everlasting pipe. And 
in the morning, after a silent breakfast, 
he said, ‘‘ Mine vriends, stay here a year 
or two, and rake in mine rubbish. Ven 
you are tired, here are springbok and 
antelopes, and you can shoot mit your 
rifles, and ve vill cook them, and you 
shall zing us zongs of Vaderland.”’ 

They thanked him heartily, and said 
they would stay a few days at all 
events. 

The placid Boer went a-farming ; and 
the pair shouldered their pick and shovel, 
and worked on their heap all day, and 
found a number of pretty stones, but no 
diamond. 

““Come,”’ said Falcon, ‘‘ we must go to 
the river;’’ and Staines acquiesced. ‘‘I 
bow to experience,’’ said he. 

At the threshold they found two of the 
little Bulteels playing with pieces of 
quartz, crystal, etc., on the door-stone. 
One of these stones caught Staines’s eye 
directly. It sparkled in a different way 
He examined it: it was 
the size of a white haricot bean, and one 
side of it polished by friction. He looked 
at it, and looked, and saw that it re- 
fracted the light. He felt convinced it 
was a diamond. 

‘“Give the boy a penny for it,’’ said 
the ingenious Falcon, on receiving the 
information. 


350 WORKS 


‘‘Oh!’’ said Staines. ‘‘ Take advan- 
tage of a child ? ”’ 

He borrowed it of the boy, and laid it 
on the table after supper. ‘“‘ Sir,’’ said 
he, ‘‘ this is what we were raking in your 
kopjes for, and could not find it. It be- 
longs to little Hans. Will you sell it us? 
We are not experts; but we think it may 
be a diamond. We will risk ten pounds 
OH Th... 

“Ten 
66 Nay, 
vriend.”’ 

‘* But, if it is a diamond, it is worth a 
hundred. See how it gains fire in the 
dusk ! ”’ 

In short, they forced the ten pounds on 
him, and the next day went to work on 
another kopje. 

But the simple farmer’s conscience 
smote him. It was a slack time; so he 
sent four Hottentots, with shovels, to 
help these friendly maniacs. These 
worked away gayly; and the white 
men set up a sorting table, and sorted 
the stuff, and hammered the nodules, and 
at last found a little stone as big as a 
pea, that refracted the light. Staines 
showed this to the Hottentots ; and their 
quick eyes discovered two more that day, 
only smaller. 

Next day nothing but a splinter or two. 

Then Staines determined to dig deeper, 
contrary to the general impression. He 
gave his reason: ‘‘ Diamonds don’t fall 
from the sky. They work up from the 
ground; and clearly the heat must be 
greater further down.”’ 

Acting on this, they tried the next 
strata, but found it entirely barren. 
After that, however, they came to a 
fresh layer of carbonate; and here, Fal- 
con hammering a large lump of conglom- 


pounds!’’ said the farmer. 
we rob not travelers, mine 


erate, out leaped, all of a sudden, a dia- 


mond big as a nut, that ran along the 
earth, gleaming like a star. It had pol- 
ished angles and natural facets; and 
even a novice with an eye in his head 
could see it was a diamond of the purest 
water. Staines and Falcon shouted with 
delight, and made the’ blacks a present 
on the spot, 

They showed the prize at night, and 


OF CHARLES 


READE. 


begged the farmer to take to digging. 
There was ten times more money beneath 
his soil than on it. | 

Not he. He was a farmer: did not be- 
heve in diamonds. 

_ Two days afterward another great find. 
Seven small diamonds. 

Next day a stone as large as a cob-nut, 
and with strange and beautiful streaks. 
They carried it home to dinner, and set 
it on the table, and told the family it 
was worth a thousand pounds. Bulteel 
scarcely looked at it; but the vrow trem- 
bled, and all the young folk glowered 
at it. ) 

In the middle of dinner it exploded like 
a cracker, and went literally into diamond- 
dust. 

‘* Dere goes von tousand pounds,’’ said 
Bulteel, without moving a muscle. 

Falcon swore. But Staines showed 
fortitude. ‘‘It was laminated,’ said he ; 
‘and exposure to the air was fatal.”’ 

Owing to the invaluable assistance of 
the Hottentots, they had in less than a 
month collected four large stones of pure 
water, and a wine-glassful of small stones, 
when one fine day, going to work calmly 
after breakfast, they found some tents 
pitched, and at least a score of dirty dig- 
gers, bearded like the pard, at work on 
the ground. Staines sent Falcon back to 
tell Bulteel, and suggest that he should 
at once order them off, or, better still, 
make terms with them. The phlegmatic 
Boer did neither. 

In twenty-four hours it was too late. 
The place was rushed. In other words, 
diggers swarmed to the spot, with no idea 
of law but diggers’ law. 

A thousand tents rose like mushrooms ; 
and poor Bulteel stood, smoking and star- 
ing, amazed, at his own door, and saw a 
veritable procession of wagons, Cape 
carts, and powdered travelers, file past 
him to take possession of his hillocks. 
Him, the proprietor, they simply ignored : 
they had a committee, who were to deal 
with all obstructions, landlords and ten- 
ants included. They themselves meas- 
ured out Bulteel’s farm into thirty-foot 
claims, and went to work with shovel and 
pick. They held Staines’s claim sacred : 


A SIMPLETON. 


that was diggers’ law ; but they confined 
it strictly to thirty feet square. 

Had the friends resisted, their brains 
would have been knocked out. However, 
they gained this, that dealers poured in, 
and, the market being not yet glutted, 
the price was good. Staines sold a few 
of the small stones for two hundred 
pounds. He showed one of the larger 
stones. The dealer’s eye glittered, but he 
offered only three hundred pounds, and 
this was so wide of the ascending scale on 
which a stone of that importance is priced 
that Staines reserved it for sale at Cape 
Town. 

Nevertheless, he, afterward doubted 

whether he had not better have taken it ; 
for the multitude of diggers turned out 
such a prodigious number of diamonds at 
Bulteel’s pan than a sort of panic fell on 
the market. 
_ These dry diggings were a revelation to 
the world. Men began to think the 
diamond, perhaps, was a commoner stone 
than any one had dreamed it to be. 

As to the discovery of stones, Staines 
and Falcon lost nothing by being confined 
to a thirty-foot claim. Compelled to dig 
deeper, they got into richer strata, where 
they found garnets by the pint, and some 
small diamonds, and at last, one lucky 
day, their largest diamond. It weighed 
thirty-seven carats, and was a rich yel- 
low. Now, when a diamond is clouded or 
off color, it is terribly depreciated ; but a 
diamond with a positive color is called a 
fancy stone, and ranks with the purest 
stones. 

‘T wish I had this‘in Cape Town,”’ 
Staines. 

‘‘Why, I’ll take it to Cape Town, if 
you like,’’ said the changeable Falcon. 

“You will?’’ said Christopher, sur- 
prised. 

‘Why not? I’m not much of a digger. 
I can serve our interest better by selling. 
I could get a thousand pounds for this at 
Cape Town.”’ 

“We will talk of that quietly,’ said 
Christopher. 

Now the fact is, Falcon as a digger, 
was not worth a pin. He could not sort. 
His eyes would not bear the blinding 


said 


B51 


glare of a tropical sun upon lime and daz- 
zling bits of mica, quartz, crystal, white 
topaz, etc., in the midst of which the true 
glint of the royal stone had to be caught 
ina moment. He could not sort, and he 
had not the heart to dig. The only way to 
make him earn his half was to turn him 
into the traveling and selling partner. 

Christopher was too generous to tell 
him this; but he acted on it, and said he 
thought his was an excellent proposal : 
indeed, he had better take all the dia- 
monds they had got to Dale’s Kloof first, 
and show them to his wife for her consola- 
tion. ‘‘ And perhaps,”’ said he, “‘in a mat- 
ter of this importance, she will go to Cape 
Town with you and try the market there.”’ 

‘* All right,’’ said Falcon. 

He sat and brooded over the matter a 
long time, and said, ‘‘Why make two 
bites of a cherry? They will only give 
us half the value at Cape Town. Why 
not go by the steamer to England, before 
the London market is glutted, and all the 
world finds out that diamonds are as com- 
mon as dirt? ”’ 

“Go to England! What, without your 
wife? Ill never be a party to that. Me 
part mae and wife! If you knew my own 
story ’ 

“Why, who wants you?”’’ a Regi- 
nald. ‘ You don’t understand. Phoebe 
is dying to visit England again; but she 
has got no excuse. If you like to give 
her one, she eu be much obliged to you, 
I can tell you.’ 

‘¢Oh, that is a very nitteron matter ! 
If Mrs. Falcon can leave her farm’ 

‘Oh! that brute of a brother of h hers 
is a very honest fellow, for that matter. 
She can trust the farm to him. Besides, 
it is only a month’s voyage by the mail 
steamer.”’ 

This suggestion of Falcon’s set Christo- 
pher’s heart bounding, and his eyes glis- 
tening. But he restrained himself, and 
said, ‘‘This takes me by surprise: let me 
smoke a pipe over it.”’ 

He not only did that ; but he lay awake 
all night. 

The fact is, that for some time past, 
Christopher had felt sharp twinges of 
conscience, and deep misgivings, as to the 


352 WORKS 
course he had pursued in leaving his wife 
a single day in the dark. Complete con- 
valescence had cleared his moral senti- 
ments; and perhaps, after all, the dis- 
covery of the diamonds had co-operated : 
since now the insurance money was no 
longer necessary to keep his wife from 
starving. 

““ Ah!” said he, ‘‘ faith is a great qual- 
ity ; and how I have lacked it! ”’ 

To do him justice, he knew his wife’s ex- 
citable nature, and was not without fears 
of some disaster, should the news be com- 
municated to her unskillfully. 

But this proposal of Falcon’s made the 
way clearer. Mrs. Falcon, though not a 
lady, had all a lady’s delicacy, and all a 
woman’s tact and tenderness. He knew 
no one in the world more fit to be trusted 
with the delicate task of breaking to his 
Rosa that the grave, for once, was baffled, 
and her husband lived. He now became 
quite anxious for Falcon’s departure, and 
ardently hoped that worthy had not de- 
ceived himself as to Mrs. Falcon’s desire 
to visit England. 

In short, it was settled that Falcon 
should start for Dale’s Kloof, taking with 
him the diamonds, believed to be worth 
altogether three thousand pounds at Cape 
Town, and nearly as much again in Eng- 
land, and a long letter to Mrs. Falcon, in 
which Staines revealed his true story, 
told her where to find his wife, or hear of 
her, viz., at Kent Villa, Gravesend, and 
sketched an outline of instructions as to 
the way, and cunning degrees by which the 
joyful news should be broken to her. With 
this he sent a long letter to be given to 
Rosa herself, but not till she should know 
all; and inthis letter he inclosed the 
ruby ring she had given him. That ring 
had never left his finger, by sea or land, 
in sickness or health. ; 

The letter to Rosa was sealed. The two 
letters made quite a packet; for in the 
letter to his beloved Rosa he told her 
everything that had befallen him. It was 
a romance, and a picture of love—a letter 
to lift a loving woman to heaven, and al- 
most reconcile her to all her bereaved 
heart had suffered. 

This letter, written with many tears 


OF CHARLES READE. 


from the heart that had so suffered, and 
was now softened by good fortune, and 
bounding with joy, Staines intrusted to 
Falcon, together with the other diamonds, 
and, with many warm shakings of the 
hand, started him on his. way. 

“* But mind, Falcon,’’ said Christopher, 
‘‘T shall expect an answer from Mrs. 
Falcon in twenty days at furthest. I do 
not feel so sure as you do that she wants 
to go to England, and, if not, I must 
write to Uncle Philip. Give me your 
solemn promise, old fellow—an answer in 
twenty days, if you have to send a Caffre 
on horseback.’’ 

“IT give you my honor, 
superbly. 

‘Send it to me at Bulteel’s Farm.”’ 


3? 


said Falcon 


“All right. Dr. Christie, Bulteel’s 
Farm.”’ 
«“Well—no. Why should I conceal my 


real name any longer from such friends 
as you and your wife? Christie is short 
for Christopher: that 7s my Christian 
name; but my surname is Staines. Write 
to ‘Dr. Staines.’ ”’ 

‘‘Dr. Staines !|”’ 

‘“Yes. Did you ever hear of me ?”’ 

Falcon wore a strange look. “I almost 
think I have. Down at Gravesend, or 
somewhere.”’ 

“That is curious. Yes, I married my 
Rosa there — poor thing! God bless her ; 
God comfort her. She thinks me dead.’’ 

His voice trembled ; he grasped Falcon’s 
cold hand till the latter winced again ; 
and so they parted; and Falcon rode off 
muttering ‘‘ Dr. Staines! so, then, you 
are Dr. Staines.”’ 


CHAPTER XXI. 


Rosa STAINES had youth on her side ; 
and it is an old saying that youth will 
not be denied. Youth struggled with 
death for her, and won the battle. 

But she came out of that terrible fight 
weak as a child. The sweet, pale face, 


A SIMPLETON. 


the widow’s cap, the suit of deep black— 
it was long ere these came down from the 
sick-room. And, when they did, oh the 
dead blank! the weary, listless life! the 
days spent in sighs and tears and deso- 
lation. Solitude, solitude! Her husband 
was gone; anda strange woman played 
the mother to her child before her eyes. 

Uncle Philip was devotedly kind to her, 
and so was her father ; but they could do 
nothing for her. 

Months rolled on, and skinned the 
wound over. Months could not heal. 
Her boy became dearer and dearer ; and 
it was from him came the first real drops 
of comfort, however feeble. 

She used to read her lost one’s diary 
every day, and worship in deep sorrow 
the mind she had scarcely respected until 
it was too late. She searched in this 
diary to find his will; and often she 
mourned that he had written on it so few 
things she could obey. Her desire to 
obey the dead, whom living she had often 
disobeyed, was really simple and touch- 
ing. She would mourn to her father that 
there were so few commands to her in 
his diary. ‘‘ But,’’? said she, “‘ memory 
brings me back his will in many things ; 
and to obey is now the only sad comfort 
Thave.?* 

It was in this spirit she now forced her- 
self to keep accounts. No fear of her 
wearing stays now, no powder, no trim- 
mings, no waste. 

After the usual delay, her father told 
her she should instruct a solicitor to apply 
to the insurance company for the six 
thousand pounds. She refused with a 
burst of agony. ‘‘ The price of his life,”’ 
she screamed. ‘‘ Never! I’d live on bread 
and water sooner than touch that vile 
money.” 

Her father remonstrated gently. But 
she was immovable. ‘‘No. It would be 
like consenting to his death.”’ 

Then Uncle Philip was sent for. 

He set her child on her knee, and gave 
her a pen. ‘‘Come,”’ said he sternly, 
‘‘be a woman, and do your duty to little 
Christie.” 

She kissed the boy, cried, and did her 
duty meekly. But, when the money was 


353 


brought her, she flew to Uncle Philip, 
and said, ‘‘ There, there!’’ and threw it 
all before him, and cried as if her heart 
would break. He waited patiently, and 
asked her what he was to do with all 
that: invest it? | 

“Yes, yes, for my little Christie.’’ 

“And pay you the interest quar- 
terly P77 

SON eNO anion 
aS we want it. 
truly kind to a simpleton. 
word.”’ 

«And suppose I run off with it? Such 
confiding geese as you corrupt a man.”’ 

‘‘] shall never corrupt you. Crusty 
people are the soul of honor.”’ 

‘*Crusty people!’ cried Philip, affect- 
ing amazement. ‘‘ What are they ?”’ 

She bit her lip, and colored a little, but 
answered adroitly, ‘‘ They are people 
that pretend not to have good hearts, but 
have the best in the world—far better 
ones than your smooth ones : that’s crusty 
people.”’ | 

“Very well,’’ said Philip; ‘and Ill 
tell you what simpletons are. They are 
little transparent-looking creatures, that 
look shallow, but are as deep as old Nick, 
and make you love them in spite of your 
judgment. They are the most artful of 
their sex; for they always achieve its 
great object—to be loved—the very thing 
that clever women sometimes fail in.”’ 

‘Well, and, if we are not to be loved, 
why live at all—such useless things as I 
am?’ said Rosa simply. 

So Philip took charge of her money, and 
agreed to help her save money for her 
little Christopher. Poverty should never 
destroy him, as it had his father. 

As months rolled on, she crept out into 
public a little, but always on foot, and a 
very little way from home. 

Youth and sober life gradually restored 
her strength, but not her color nor her 
buoyancy. 

Yet she was, perhaps, more beautiful 
than ever; for a holy sorrow chastened 
and sublimed her features: it was now a 
sweet, angelic, pensive beauty, that in- 
terested every feeling person at a glance. 


She would visit no one; but, a twelve- 
a iL 2 READE—VOL. VIII. 


Dribble us out a little 
That is the way to be 
I ‘hate that 


304 


month after her bereavement, she re- 
ceived a few chosen visitors. 

One day a young gentleman called, and 
sent up his card, ‘‘ Lord Tadcaster,’’ with 
a note from Lady Cicely Treherne, full of 
kindly feeling. Uncle Philip had recon- 
ciled her to Lady Cicely; but they had 
never met. 

Mrs. Staines was much agitated at 
the very name of Lord Tadcaster; but 
she would not have missed seeing him for 
the world. 

She received him, with her beautiful 
eyes wide open, to drink in every linea- 
ment of one who had seen the last of her 
Christopher. 

Tadcaster was wonderfully improved : 
he had grown six inches out at sea, and, 
though still short, was not diminutive. 
He was a small Apollo, a model of sym- 
metry, and had an engaging, girlish 
beauty, redeemed from downright effem- 
inacy by a golden mustache like silk, and 
a tanned cheek that became him wonder- 
fully. 

He seemed dazzled at first by Mrs. 
Staines, but murmured that Lady Cicely 
had told him to come, or he would not 
have ventured. 

“Who can be so welcome to me as 
you?’’ said she; and the tears came 
thick in her eyes directly. 

Soon, he hardly knew how, he found 
himself talking of Staines, and telling her 
what a favorite he was, and all the clever 
things he had done. 

The tears streamed down her cheeks, 
but she begged him to go on telling her, 
and omit nothing. 

He complied heartily, and was even so 
moved by the telling of his friend’s vir- 
tues, and her tears and sobs, that he 
mingled his tears with hers. She re- 
warded him by giving him her hand as 
she turned away her tearful face to in- 
dulge the fresh burst of grief his sympa- 
thy evoked. 

When he was leaving, she said in her 
simple way, ‘ Bless you!’’— ‘Come 
again,’’ she said: “‘‘you have done a 
poor widow good.”’ 

Lord Tadcaster was so interested and 
charmed, he would gladly have come 


WORKS OF CHARLES RHADE. 


back next day to see her; but he re- 
strained that extravagance, and waited 
a week. 

Then he visited her again. He had ob- 
served the villa was not rich in flowers, 
and he took her down a magnificent bou- 
quet cut from his father’s hothouses. At 
sight of him, or at sight of it, or both, 
the color rose for once in her pale check ; 
and her pensive face wore a Sweet expres- 
sion of satisfaction. She took his flowers, 
and thanked him for them and for coming 
to see her. 

Soon they got on the only topic she 
cared for; and in the course of this sec- 
ond conversation, he took her into his 
confidence, and told her he owed every- 
thing to Dr. Staines. “I was on the 
wrong road altogether, and he put me 
right. To tell you the truth, I used to 
disobey him now and then while he was 
alive, and I was always the worse for it ; 
now he is gone, I never disobey him. I 
have written down a lot of wise, kind 
things he said to me; and I never go 
against any one of them. I call it my 
book of oracles. Dear me, I might have 
brought it with me.”’ 

“Oh, yes! why didn’t you?” rather 
reproachfully. 

“‘] will bring it next time.”’ 

“Pray do.”” 

Then she looked at him with her lovely 
swimming eyes, and said, tenderly, ““And 
so here is another that disobeyed’ him liv- 
ing, but obeys him dead. What will you 
think when I tell you that I, his wife, who 
now worship him when it is too late, often 
thwarted and vexed him when he was 
alive ? ’’ 

“No, no! He told me you were an 
angel, and I believe it.”’ 

““Anangel! A good-for-nothing, fool- 
ish woman, who sees everything: too 
late.’’ 

‘« Nobody else should say so before me,”’ 
said the little gentleman, grandly. ‘I 
shall take hts word before yours on this 
one subject. If ever there was an angel, 
you are one; and oh! what would I give 
if I could but say or do anything in the 
world to comfort vou! ”’ 

‘* You can do nothing for me, dear, but 


alla te head 


A SIMPLETON. 


come and see me often, and talk to me as 
you do, on the one sad theme my broken 
heart has room for.”’ 

This invitation delighted Lord Tadcas- 
ter; and the sweet word ‘‘dear’”’ from 
her lovely lips entered his heart, and ran 
through all his veins hike some rapturous 
but dangerous elixir. He did not say to 
himself, “‘She is a widow with a child, 
feels old with grief, and looks on me as.a 
boy who has been kind to her.’”’ Such 
prudence and wariness were hardly to be 
expected from his age. He had admired 
her at first sight, very nearly loved her 
at their first interview; and now this 
sweet word opened a heavenly vista. 
The generous heart that beat in his 
small frame burned to console her with 
a life-long devotion and all the sweet 
offices of love. 

He ordered his yacht to Gravesend (for 
he had become a sailor); and then he 
called on Mrs. Staines, and told her, with 
a sort of sheepish cunning, that now, as 
his yacht happened to be at Gravesend, 
he could come and see her very often. 
He watched her timidly to see how she 
would take that proposition. 

She said with the utmost simplicity, 
‘“l’m very glad of it.” 

Then he produced his oracles; and she 
devoured them. Such precepts to Tad- 
caster as she could apply to her own case 
she instantly noted in her memory; and 
they became her law from that moment. 

Then in her simplicity she said, ‘‘ And 
I will show you some things in his own 
handwriting that may be good for you. 
But I can’t show you the whole book: 
some of it is sacred from every eye but 
his wife’s. His wife’s? Ah, me! his 
widow’s.’’ 

Then she pointed out passages in the 
diary that she thought might be for his 
good ; and he nestled to her side, and fol- 
lowed her white finger with loving eyes, 
and was in an Elysium, which she would 
certainly have put a stop to at that time 
had she divined it. But all wisdom does 
not come at once to an unguarded woman. 
Rosa Staines was wiser about her husband 
than she had been; but she had plenty to 
learn. 


3D5 


Lord Tadcaster anchored off Gravesend, 
and visited Mrs. Staines nearly every day. 
She received him with a pleasure that was 
not at all lively, but quite undisguised. He 
could not doubt his welcome; for once, 
when he came, she said to the servant, 
“Not at home ’’—a plain proof she did 
not wish his visit to be cut short by any 
one else. 

And so these visits and devoted atten- 
tions of every kind went on unobserved 
by Lord Tadcaster’s friends, because 
Rosa would never go out, even with him; 
but at last Mr. Lusignan saw plainly how 
this would end, unless he interfered. 

Well, he did not interfere : on the con- 
trary, he was careful to avoid putting his 
daughter on her guard. He said to 
himself, ‘‘ Lord Tadcaster does her good. 
I’m afraid she would not marry him if he 
was to ask her now; but in time she 
might. She likes him a great deal better 
than any one else.”’ 

As for Philip, he was abroad for his 
health, somewhat impaired by his own 
long and faithful attendance on Rosa. 

So now Lord Tadcaster was in constant 
attendance on Rosa. She was languid, 
but gentle and kind; and as mourners, 
like invalids, are apt to be egotistical, she 
saw nothing but that he was a comfort to 
her in her affliction. 

While matters were so, the Earl of 
Miltshire, who had long been sinking, 
died; and Tadcaster succeeded to his 
honors and estates. 

Rosa heard of it, and, thinking it was a 
great bereavement, wrote him one of 
those exquisite letters of condolence a lady 
alone can write. He took it to Lady 
Cicely, and showed it to her. She highly 
approved it. 

He said, “The only thing—it makes me 
ashamed I do not feel my poor father’s 
death more; but you know it has been so 
long expected.’? Then he was silent a 
long time; and then he asked her if such 
a woman as that would not make him 
happy, if he could win her. 

It was on her ladyship’s tongue to say, 
‘‘She did not make her first happy ; ”’ but 
she forbore, and said coldly, that was 
maw than she could say. 


306 WORKS 

Tadcaster seemed disappointed by that, 
and by and by Cicely took herself to task. 
She asked herself what were Tadcaster’s 
chances in the lottery of wives. The 
heavy army of scheming mothers, and 
the light cavalry of artful daughters, rose 
before her cousinly and disinterested eyes, 
and she asked herself what chance poor 
little Tadcaster would have of catching a 
true love, with a hundred female artists 
maneuvering, wheeling, ambuscading and 
charging upon his wealth and titles. She 
returned to the subject of her own accord, 
and told him she saw but one objection to 
such a match—the lady had ason by a 
man of rare merit and misfortune. Could 
he, at his age, undertake to be a father to 
that son? ‘‘ Othawise,’’ said Lady Cicely, 
‘‘“maak my words, you will quall over 
that poor child ; and you will have two to 
quall with, because I shall be on her 
side.’’ 

Tadcaster declared to her that the child 
should be quite the opposite of a bone of 
contention. ‘I have thought of that,”’’ 
said he; ‘‘and I mean to be so kind to that 
boy, I shall make her love me for that.’’ 

On these terms Lady Cicely gave her 
consent. 

Then he asked her should he write, or 
ask her in person. 

Lady Cicely reflected. 
I think she will say No.”’ 

bin if veo oe 

“Then it will depend on how you do it. 
Rosa Staines isa true mourner. What- 
ever you may think, I don’t believe the 
idea of a second union has ever entered 
her head. But then she is very unselfish; 
and she likes you better than any one else, 
I dare say. I don’t think your title or 
your money will weigh with her now. But 
if you show her your happiness depends 
on it, she may perhaps cry and sob at 
the very idea of it, and then, after all, 
say, ‘Well, why not, if 1 can make the 
poor soul happy ?’ ”’ 

So, on this advice, Tadcaster went down 
to Gravesend, and Lady Cicely felt a cer- 
tain self-satisfaction ; for her well-meant 
interference having lost Rosa one hus- 
band, she was pleased to think she had 
done something to give her another. 


‘*If you write, 


OF CHARLES 


RHADE. 
\ 

Lord Tadcaster came to Rosa Staines. 
He found her seated with her head upon 
her white hand, thinking sadly of the past. 

At sight of him in deep mourning she 
started, and said, ‘‘Oh!’”’ 

Then she said tenderly, “‘ We are one 
color now,’’ and gave him her hand. 

He sat down beside her, not knowing 
how to begin. 

‘“‘Tam not Tadcaster now. I am Earl 
of Miltshire.”’ 
“ Ah, yes! 

ently. 

‘This is my first visit to any one in 
that character.”’ . 

«¢' Thank you.”’ 

‘‘Itis an awfully important visit to me. 
I could not feel myself independent, and 
able to secure your comfort and little 
Christie’s, without coming to the lady, 
the only lady I ever saw, that—Oh, Mrs. 
Staines, Rosa! who could see you as I 
have done, mingle his tears with yours as 
IT have done, and not love you, and long to 
offer you his love ?”’ 

‘‘Love ! to mea broken-hearted woman, 
with nothing to live for but his memory 
and his child ! ’’ 

She looked at him with a sort of scared 
amazement. 

‘* His child shall be mine. His memory 
is almost as dear to me as to you.”’ 

‘* Nonsense, child, nonsense! ’’ said she 
almost sternly. 

‘*Was he not my best friend? Should 
Ihave the health I enjoy, or even be 
alive, but for him? Oh, Mrs. Staines, 
Rosa! you will not live all your life un- 
married ; and who will love you as I do? 


I forgot,’’ said she indiffer- 


You are my first and only love: my hap- 
piness depends on you.’’ 
‘Your happiness depend on me! 


Heaven forbid !—a woman of my age, 
that feels so old, old, old.’’ 

‘You are not old: you are young and 
sad and beautiful, and my happiness de- 
pendson you.’’ She began to tremble a 
little. Then he kneeled at her knees, and 
implored her ; and his hot tears fell upon 
the hand she put out to stop him, while 
she turned her head away, and the tears 
began to run. 

Oh! never can the cold dissecting pen 


A SIMPLETON. 


tell what rushes over the heart that has 
loved and lost, when another true love 
first kneels and implores for love or pity, 
or anything the bereaved can give. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


WHEN Falcon went, luck seemed to 
desert their claim. Day after day went 
by without a find; and the discoveries on 
every side made this the more mortify- 
ing. 

By this time, the diggers at Bulteel’s 
pan were as miscellaneous as the audience 


at Drury Lane Theater, only mixed more ; 


closely : the gallery folk and the stalls 
worked cheek by jowl. Here a gentleman 
with an affected lisp, and close by an 
honest fellow who could not deliver a sen- 
tence without an oath, or some still more 
horrible expletive that meant nothing at 
all in reality, but served to make respect- 
able flesh creep; interspersed with these, 
Hottentots, Caffres, and wild blue-blacks 
gayly clad in an ostrich feather, a scarlet 
ribbon, and a Tower musket sold them by 
some good Christian for a modern rifle. 

On one side of Staines were two swells, 
who lay on their backs, and talked opera 
half the day, but seldom condescended to 
work without finding a diamond of some 
sort. 

After a week’s deplorable luck, his 
Caffre boy struck work on account of a 
sore in his leg : the sore was due to a very 
common cause—the burning sand had 
got into a scratch, and festered. Staines, 
out of humanity, examined the sore; and, 
proceeding to clean it before bandaging, 
out popped a diamond worth forty pounds 
even in the depreciated market. Staines 
quietly pocketed it, and bandaged the leg. 
This made him suspect his blacks had been 
cheating him ona large scale ; and he bor- 
rowed Hans Bulteel to watch them, giving 
him a third, with which Master Hans was 
mightily pleased. But they could only 


307 


find small diamonds; and by this time 
prodigious slices of luck were reported on 
every side. Caffres and Boers, that would 
not dig, but traversed large tracts of 
ground when the sun was shining, stum- 
bled over diamonds. One Boer pointed 
to a wagon and eight oxen, and said that 
one lucky glance on the sand had given 
him that lot; but day after day Staines 
returned home, covered with dust, and 
almost blinded, yet with little or nothing 
to show for it. 

One evening, complaining of his change 
of luck, Bulteel quietly proposed to him 
migration. ‘‘I am going,’’ said he re- 
signedly ; ‘‘and you can come with me.”’ 

“You leave your farm, sir? Why, they 
pay you ten shillings a claim, and that 
must make a large return: the pan is 
fifteen acres.”’ 

“Yes, mine vriend,’’? said the poor 
Hollander, ‘‘dey pay; but deir money 
it cost too dear. Vere is mine peace ? 
Dis farm is six thousand acres. If de 
cursed diamonds was further off, den it 
vas vell. Bud dey are too near. Once I 
could smoke in peace, and zleep. Now 
diamonds is come, and zleep and peace is 
fled. Dere is four tousand tents, and to 
each tent a dawg: dat dawg bark at 
four tousand oder dawgs all night; and 
dey bark at him and at each oder. Den 
de masters of de dawgs dey get angry, 
and fire four tousand pistole at de four 
tousand dawgs, and make my bed shake 
wid the trembling of mine vrow. My 
vaimly is wid diamonds infected. Dey vil 
not vork. Dey take long valks, and al- 
ways looks on de ground. Mine childre 
shall be hump-backed, round-shouldered, 
looking down for diamonds. Dey shall 
forget Gott. He is on high: deir eyes 
are always on de earth. De diggers 
found a diamond in mine plaster of mine 
wall of mine house. Dat plaster was 
limestone; it come from dose kopjes de 
good Gott madein his anger against man 
for his vickedness. I zay so. Dey not 
believe me. Dey tink dem abominable 
stones grow in mine house, and break out 
in mine plaster like de measle: dey vaunt 
to dig in mine vall, in mine garden, in mine 
floor. One day dey shall dig in mine body. 


358 WORKS 


OF CHARLES READE. 


I vill go. Better I love peace dan money. you. When you got well, by God’s mercy, 


Here is English company make me offer 
for mine varm. Dey forgive de dia- 
monds.”’ | 

“You have not accepted it?’’ cried 
Staines in alarm. 

‘No, but PF vill. 
tink of it. Dat is my vay. 
yah.” 

“An English company? They will 
cheat you without mercy. No, they shall 
not, though; for I will have a hand in 
the bargain.”’ 

He set to work directly, added up the 
value of the claims, at ten shillings per 
month, and amazed the poor Hollander 
by his statement of the value of those 
fifteen acres, capitalized. 

And, to close this part of the subject, 
the obnoxious diamonds obtained him 
three times as much money as his father 
had paid for the whole six thousand 
acres. 

The company got a great bargain; but 
Bulteel received what for him was a large 
capital, and, settling far to the south, 
this lineal descendant of ‘‘ le philosophe 
sans le savoir’’ carried his godliness, his 
cleanliness, and his love of peace, out of 
the turmoil, and was happier than ever ; 
since now he could compare his placid ex- 
istence with one year of noise and clamor. 

But, long before this, events more per- 
tinent to my story had occurred. 

One day a Hottentot came into Bul- 
teel’s farm, and went about among the 
diggers till he found Staines. The Hot- 
tentot was one employed at Dale’s Kloof, 
and knew him. He brought Staines a 
letter. 

Staines opened the letter, and another 
letter fell out: it was directed to ‘‘ Regi- 
nald Falcon, Esq.”’ 

‘“Why,’’ thought Staines, “what a 
time this letter must have been on the 
road! So much for private messen- 
gers !”’ 

The letter ran thus: 


I have said I shall 
So I say 


‘¢ DEAR StR—This leaves us all well at 
Dale’s Kloof, as I hope it shall find you 
and my dear husband at the diggings. Sir, 
Iam happy to say | have good news for 


I wrote to the doctor at the hospital, and 
told him so. I wrote unbeknown to you, 
because | had promised him. Well, sir, 
he has written back to say you have two 
hundred pounds in money, and a great 
many valuable things, such as gold and 
jewels. They are all at the old bank in 
Cape Town ; and the cashier has seen you, 
and will deliver them on demand. So 
that is the first of my good news, because 
it is good news to you. But, dear sir, I 
think you will be pleased to hear that 
Dick and I are thriving wonderfully, 
thanks to your good advice. The wooden 
house it is built, and a great oven. But, 
sir, the traffic came almost before we 
were ready, and the miners that call here, 
coming and going, every day, you would 
not believe, likewise wagons and carts. It 
is all bustle, morn till night; and dear 
Reginald will never be dull here now. I 
hope you will be so kind as tell him so; 
for I do long to see you both home again. 

«Sir, we are making our fortunes. The 
grain we could not, sell at a fair price we 
sell as bread, and higher than in England 
ever so much! ‘Tea and coffee the same; 
and the poor things praise us, too, for 
being so moderate. So, sir, Dick bids me 
say that we owe this to you, and, if so be 
you are minded to share, why, nothing 
would please us better. Headpiece is al- 
ways worth money in these parts; and, 
if it hurts your pride to be our partner 
without money, why, you can throw in 
what you have at the Cape, though we 
don’t ask that. And, besides, we are 
offered diamonds, a bargain every day, 
but are afraid to deal for want of experi- 
ence; but if you were in it with us, you 
must know them well by this time, and we 
might turn many a good pound that way. 
Dear sir, I hope you will not be offended ; 
but I think this is the only way we have, 
Dick and I, to show our respect and good- 
will. 

‘Dear sir, digging is hard work, and 
not fit for you and Reginald, that are 
gentlemen, among a lot of rough fellows, 
that their talk makes my hair stand on 
end; though I dare say they mean no 
harm. 


A SIMPLETON. 


‘Your bedroom is always ready, sir. 
I never will let it to any one of them, 
hoping now to see you every day. You 
that know everything can guess how I 
long to see you both home. My very 
good-fortune seems not to taste like good- 
fortune, without those I love and esteem 
to share it. I shall count how many days 
this letter will take to reach you; and 
then I shall pray for your safety harder 
than ever till the blessed hour comes when 
I see my husband and my good friend, 
never to part again, I hope, in this 
world. 

“JT am, sir, your dutiful servant and 
friend, PHa@BE DALE. 


‘“*P.S.—There is regular traveling to 
and from Cape Town, and a post now to 
Pniel; but I thought it surest to send by 
one that knows you.”’ 


Staines read this letter with great satis- 
faction. He remembered his two hundred 
pounds; but his gold and jewels puzzled 
him. Stillit was good news, and pleased 
him not a little. Phcoebe’s good-fortune 
gratified him too, and her offer of a part- 
nership, especially in the purchase of 
diamonds from returning diggers. He 
saw a large fortune to be made; and 
wearied and disgusted with recent ill-luck, 
blear-eyed, and almost blinded with sort- 
ing in the blazing sun, he resolved to go 
at once to Dale’s Kloof. Should Mrs. 
Falcon be gone to Kngland with the 


diamonds, he would stay there, and Rosa | 


should come out to him; or he would go 
and fetch her. 

He went home and washed himself, and 
told Bulteel he had had good news, and 
should leave the diggings at once. He 
gave him up the claim, and told him to 
sell it by auction. It was worth two hun- 
dred pounds still. The good people 
sympathized with him; and he started 
within an hour. He left his pickaxe and 
shovel, and took only his double rifle—an 
admirable one—some ammunition, includ- 
ing conical bullets and projectile shells 
given him by Falcon, a bag full of car- 
buncles and garnets he had collected for 
Ucatella, a few small diamonds, and one 
hundred pounds—all that remained to 


359 


him, since he had been paying wages and - 
other things for months, and had given 
Falcon twenty for his journey. 

He rode away, and soon put twenty 
miles between him and the diggings. 

He came to a little store that bought 
diamonds, and sold groceries and tobacco. 
He haltered his horse to a hook, and went 
in. He offered a small diamond for sale. 
The master was out; and the assistant 
said there was a glut of these small stones: 
he did not care to give money for it. 

‘Well, give me three dozen cigars.’’ 

While they were chaffering, in walked 
a Hottentot, and said, ‘“‘ Will you buy 
this??? and laid a clear, glittering stone 
on the counter as large as a walnut. 

‘¢Yes,’’ said the young man. ‘‘ How 
much ?”’ 

‘*Two hundred pounds.’’ 

“Two hundred pounds! Let us look at 
it.”” He examined it, and said he thought 
it was a diamond ; but these large stones 
were so deceitful he dared not give two 
hundred pounds. ‘‘Come again in an 
hour,’’ said he; ‘then the master will 
be in.”’ 

‘‘No,’’ said the Hottentot, quietly, and 
walked out. 

Staines, who had been literally perspir- 
ing at the sight of this stone, mounted 
his horse, and followed the man. When 
he came up to him, he asked leave to ex- 
amine the gem. The Hottentot quietly 
assented. : 

Staines looked at it allover. It hada 
rough side and a polished side; and the 
latter was of amazing softness and luster. 
It made him tremble. He said, ‘‘ Look 
here, | have only one hundred pounds in 
my pocket.’’ 

The Hottentot shook his head. 

“But, if you will go back with me to 
Bulteel’s farm, I’ll borrow the other hun- 
dred.”’ 

The Hottentot declined, and told him 
he could get four hundred pounds for it by 
going back to Pniel. ‘‘ But,’’ said he, 
my face is turned so; and, when Squat 
turn his face so, he going home. Not 
can bear go the other way then;’’ and 
he, held out his hand for the diamond. 

Staines gave it him, and was in despair 


360 


at seeing such a prize so near, yet leav- 
ing him. 

He made another effort. °‘ Well, but,’’ 
said he, ‘“‘how far are you going this 
way?” 

“Ten days.’’ 

“Why, so am I. Come with me to 
Dale’s Kloof, and I will give the other 
hundred. See, 1am in earnest; for here 
is one hundred, at all events.”’ 

Staines made this proposal, trembling 
with excitement. To his surprise and 
joy, the Hottentot assented, though with 
an air of indifference ; and on these terms 
they became fellow-travelers, and Staines 
gave him a cigar. They went on side by 
side, and halted for the night forty miles 
from Bulteel’s farm. 

They slept in a Boer’s outhouse ; and the 
vrow was civil, and lent Staines a jackal’s 
skin. In the morning he bought it for a 
diamond, a carbuncle, and a score of gar- 
nets ; for a horrible thought had occurred 
to him—if they stopped at any place 
where miners were, somebody might buy 
the great diamond over his head. This 
fear, and others, grew on him; and, with 
all his philosophy, he went on thorns, and 
was the slave of the diamond. 

He resolved to keep his Hottentot all 
to himself if possible. He shot a spring- 
bok that crossed the road; and they 
roasted a portion of the animal, and the 
Hottentot carried some on with him. 

Seeing he admired the rifle, Staines 
offered it him for the odd hundred pounds ; 
but, though Squat’s eye glittered a mo- 
ment, he declined. 

Finding that they met too many dig- 
gers and carts, Staines asked his Hotten- 
tot was there no nearer way to reach that 
star, pointing to one he knew was just 
over Dale’s Kloof. 

Oh, yes! he knew a nearer way, 
where there were trees and shade and 
grass, and many beasts to shoot. 

‘Let us take that way,’’ said Staines. 

The Hottentot, ductile as wax, except 
about the price of the diamond, assented 
calmly ; and next day they diverged, and 
got into forest scenery; and their eyes 
were soothed with green glades here ahd 
there, wherever the clumps of trees shel- 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


tered the grass from the panting sun. 
Animals abounded, and were tame. 
Staines, an excellent marksman, shot the 
Hottentot his supper without any 
trouble. 

Sleeping in the woods, 
creature near but Squat, a somber 
thought struck Staines. Suppose this 
Hottentot should assassinate him for his 
money, who would ever know? The 
thought was horrible; and he awoke 
with a start ten times that night. The 
Hottentot slept like a stone, and never 
feared for his own life and precious booty. 
Staines was compelled to own to him- 
self he had less faith in human goodness 
than the savage had. He said to him- 
self, “‘He is my superior. He is the 
master of this dreadful diamond, and I 
am its slave.’’ } 

Next day they went on till noon; and 
then they halted at a really delightful 
spot. A silver kloof ran along a bottom ; 
and there was a little clump of three aca- 
cia-trees that lowered their long tresses 
pining for the stream, and sometimes get- 
ting a cool, grateful kiss from it when the 
water was high. 

They haltered the horse, bathed in the 
stream, and lay luxurious under the aca- 
cias. All was delicious languor and en- 
joyment of life. 

The Hottentot made a fire, and burned 
the remains of a little sort of kangaroo 
Staines had shot him the evening before ; 
but it did not suffice his maw ; and, look- 
ing about him, he saw three elands lei- 
surely feeding about three hundred yards 
off. They were cropping the rich herbage 
close to the shelter of a wood. 

The Hottentot suggested that this was 
an excellent opportunity. He would bor- 
row Staines’s rifle, steal into the wood, 
crawl on his belly close up to them, and 
send a bullet through one. 

Staines did not relish the proposal. He 
had seen the savage’s eye repeatedly 
gloat on the rifle, and was not without 
hopes he might even yet relent, and give 
the great diamond for the hundred 
pounds and this rifle; and he was so 
demoralized by the diamond, and _ filled 
with suspicions, that he feared the sav- 


with not a 


A SIMPLETON. 


age, if he once had the rifle in his posses- 
sion, might cut, and be seen no more, in 
which case he, Staines, still the slave of 
the diamond, might hang himself on the 
nearest tree, and so secure his Rosa the 
insurance money, at all events. In short, 
he had really diamond on the brain. 

He hemmed and hawed a little at 
Squat’s proposal, and then got out of it 
by saying, ‘‘That is not necessary. I 
can shoot it from here.”’ 

‘It is too far,’’ objected Blacky. 

“Toofar! This is an Enfield rifle. I 
could kill the poor beast at three times 
that distance.”’ 

Blacky was amazed. “An Enfeel 
rifle,’’ said he, in the soft, musical mur- 
mur of his tribe, which is the one charm 
of the poor Hottentot; ‘‘and shoot three 
times so far.”’ 

«“Yes,’’ said Christopher. Then, seeing 
his companion’s hesitation, he conceived 
ahope. ‘If I kill that eland from here, 
will you give me the diamond, for my 
horse and the wonderful rifle? No Hot- 
tentot has such a rifle.’’ 

Squat became cold directly. ‘<The price 
of the diamond is two hundred pounds.”’ 

Staines groaned with disappointment, 
and thought to himself, with rage, ‘*‘ Any- 
body but me would club the rifle, give the 
obstinate black brute a stunner, and take 
the diamond—God forgive me !”’ 

Says the Hottentot cunningly, ‘<I can’t 
think so far aS white man. Let me see 
the eland dead, and then I shall know 
how far the rifle shoot.”’ 

‘Very well,’’ said Staines. But he 
felt sure the savage only wanted his 
meal, and would never part with the 
diamond except for the odd money. 

However, he loaded his left barrel with 
one of the explosive projectiles Falcon 
had given him: it was a little fulminat- 
ing shell with a steel point. It was with 
this barrel he had shot the murcat over- 
night; and he had found he shot better 
with this barrel than the other. He 
loaded his right barrel then, saw the 
powder well up, capped it, and cut away 
a strip of the acacia with his knife to see 
clear, and lying down in volunteer fash- 
ion, elbow on ground, drew his bead 


361 


steadily on an eland that presented him 
her broadside, her back being turned to 
the wood. The sun shone on her soft 
coat, and never was a fairer mark; the 
Sportsman’s deadly eye being in the cool 
shade, the animal in the sun. 

He aimed long and steadily. But, just 
as he was about to pull the trigger, Mind 
interposed; and he lowered the deadly 
weapon. ‘‘Poor creature !’’ he said, “I 
am going to take her life—for what? for 
a single meal. She is as big as a pony ; 
and I am to lay her carcass on the plain 
that we may eat two pounds of it. This 
is how the weasel kills the rabbit ; sucks 
an ounce of blood for his food, and wastes 
the rest. So the demoralized sheep-dog 
tears out the poor creature’s kidneys, 
and wastes the rest. Man, armed by 
science with such powers of slaying, 
should be less egotistical than weasels 
and perverted sheep-dogs. I will not kill 
her. I will not lay that beautiful body of 
hers low, and glaze those tender, loving 
eyes that never gleamed with hate or 
rage at man, and fix those innocent 
jaws that never bit the life out of any- 
thing, not even of the grass she feeds on, 
and does it more good than harm. Feed 
on, poor innocent. And you be blanked 
—you and your diamond, that I begin to 
wish I had never seen; for it would cor- 
rupt an angel.”’ 

Squat understood one word in ten; but 
he managed to reply. ‘‘ This is non- 
sense-talk,’’? said he gravely. ‘‘ The life 
is no bigger in that than in the murcat 
you shot last shoot.’ 

‘*No more it is,”’ said Staines. ‘Iam 
a fool. It is come to this, then—Caffres 
teach us theology, and Hottentots moral- 


ity. I bow to my intellectual superior. 
I’ll shoot the eland.’’. He raised his rifle 
again. 


‘¢No, no, no, no, no, no!’’ murmured 
the Hottentot, in a sweet voice scarcely 
audible, yet so keen in its entreaty that 
Staines turned hastily round to look at 
him. His face was ashy, his teeth chat- 
tering, his limbs shaking. Before Staines 
could ask him what was the matter, he 
pointed through an aperture of the 
acacias into the wood hard by the 


362 


elands. Staines looked, and saw what 
seemed to him a very long dog, or some 
such animal, crawling from tree to tree. 
He did not at all share the terror of his 
‘companion, nor understand it. But a 
terrible explanation followed. This creat- 
ure, having got to the skirt of the wood, 
expanded, by some strange magic, to an 
incredible size, and sprang into the open 
with a growl, a mighty lion: he seemed 
to ricochet from the ground, so immense 
was his second bound, that carried him 
to the eland ; and he struck her one blow 
on the head with his terrible paw, and 
felled her as if with a thunder-bolt. 
Down went her body, with all the legs 
doubled, and her poor head turned over, 
and the nose kissed the ground. ‘The 
lion stood motionless. Presently the 
eland, who was not dead, but stunned, 
began to recover, and struggled feebly 
up. Then the lion sprang on her with a 
roar, and rolled her over, and, with two 
tremendous bites and a shake, tore her 
entrails out, and laid her dying. He sat 
composedly down, and contemplated her 
last convulsions without touching her 
again. 

At his roar, though not loud, the horse, 
though he had never heard or seen a lion, 
trembled, and pulled at his halter, 

Blacky crept into the water, and 
Staines was struck with such an awe as 
he had never felt. Nevertheless, the king 
of beasts being ata distance, and occu- 
pied, and Staines a brave man, and out of 
sight, he kept his ground and watched, 
and by those means saw a sight never to 
be forgotten. The lion rose up, and stood 
in the sun, incredibly beautiful as well as 
terrible. His was not the mangy hue of 
the caged lion, but a skin tawny, golden, 
glossy as. a race-horse, and of exquisite 
tint that shone like pure gold in the sun; 
his eye a lustrous jewel of richest hue, 
and his mane sublime. He looked toward 
the wood, and uttered a full roar. This 
was so tremendous that the horse shook 
all over as if in an ague, and began to 
lather. Staines recoiled, and his flesh 
crept; and the Hottentot went under 
water, and did not emerge for ever so 
long. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


After a pause, the lion roared again ; 
and all the beasts and birds of prey 
seemed to know the meaning of that 
terrible roar. Till then the place had 
been a solitude; but now it began to fill 
in the strangest way, as if the lord of the 
forest could call all his subjects together 
with a trumpet roar. First came two 
lion cubs, to whom, in fact, the roar had 
been addressed. ‘The lion rubbed himself 
several times against the eland, but did 
not eat a morsel; and the cubs went 
in, and feasted on the prey. The lion 
politely and paternally drew back, and 
watched the young people enjoying them- 
selves. 

Meantime approached, on _ tip-toe, 
jackals and hyenas, but dared not come 
too near. Slate-colored vultures settled 
at a little distance ; but not a soul dared 
interfere with the. cubs. They saw the 
hon was acting sentinel, and they knew 
better than come near. 

After a time, papa feared for the diges- 
tion of those brats, or else his own mouth 
watered ; for he came up, knocked them 
head over heels with his velvet paw, and 
they took the gentle hint, and ran into 
the wood double-quick. 

Then the lion began tearing away at 
the eland, and bolting 
greedily. This made the rabble’s mouth 
water. The hyenas and jackals and vul- 
tures formed a circle ludicrous to behold ; 
and that circle kept narrowing as the lion 
tore away at his prey. They increased 
in numbers; and at last hunger over- 
came prudence. The rear rank shoved 
on the front, as among men; and a gen- 
eral attack seemed imminent. 

Then the lion looked up at these invad- 
ers, uttered a reproachful growl, and 
went at them, patting them right and 
left, and knocking them over. He never 
touched a vulture, nor, indeed, did he kill 
an animal. He was a lion, and only 
killed to eat: yet he soon cleared the 
place, because he knocked over a few 
hyenas and jackals; and the rest, being 
active, tumbled over the vultures before 
they could spread their heavy wings. 
After this warning, they made a respect- 
ful circle again, through which, in due 


huge morsels — 


a a 


atl 


A SIMPLETON. 


course, the gorged lion stalked into the 
wood. 

A savage’s sentiments change quickly ; 
and the Hottentot, fearing lttle from a 
full lion, was now giggling at Staines’s 
side, Staines asked him which he thought 
was the lord of all creatures—a man, or 
lion. , 

‘‘A lion,’’ said Blacky, amazed at such 
a Shallow question. 

Staines now got up, and proposed to 
continue their journey. But Blacky was 
for waiting till the ion was gone to sleep 
after his meal. 

While they discussed the question, the 
lion burst out of the wood within hearing 
of their voices, as his pricked-up ears 
showed, and made straight for them at a 
distance of scarcely thirty yards. 

Now, the chances are, the lion knew 
nothing about them, and only came to 
drink at the kloof after his meal, and 
perhaps he under the acacias ; but who 
can think calmly when his first lion bursts 
out on him a few paces off? Staines 
shouldered his rifie, took a hasty, flurried 
aim, and sent a bullet at him. 

If he had missed him, perhaps the 
report might have turned the lion; but 
he wounded him, and not mortally. In- 
stantly the enraged beast uttered a ter- 
rific roar, and came at him with his mane 
distended with rage, his eyes glaring, his 
mouth open, and his whole body dilated 
with fury. 

At that terrible moment, Staines re- 
covered his wits enough to see that what 
little chance he had was to fire into the 
destroyer, not at him. He kneeled, and 
leveled at the center of the lion’s chest, 
and not till he was within five yards did 
he fire. Through the smoke he saw the 
lion in the air above ‘him, and rolled 
shrieking into the stream, and crawled 
like a worm under the bank, by one 
motion, and there lay trembling. 

A few seconds of sick stupor passed ; 
all was silent. Had the lion lost him ? 
Was it possible he might yet escape ? 

All was silent. 

He listened, in agony, for the sniffing 
of the lion, puzzling him out by scent. 

No: all was silent. 


363 


Staines looked round, and saw a woolly 
head, and two saucer eyes, and open 
nostrils close by him. It was the Hot- 
tentot, more dead than alive. 

Staines whispered him, ‘‘I think he is 
gone.”’ 

The Hottentot whispered, “ Gone a 
little way to watch. He is wise as well 
as strong.’? With this he disappeared 
beneath the water. 

Still no sound but the screaming of the 
vultures, and snarling of the hyenas and 
jackals over the eland. 

«Take a look,”’ said Staines. 

*<Yes,’’ said Squat; “but not to-day. 
Wait here a day or two. Den he forget 
and forgive.”’ 

Now, Staines, having seen the lion lie 
down and watch the dying eland, was a 
great deal impressed by this; and, as he 
had now good hopes of saving his life, 
he would not throw away a chance. He 
kept his head just above water, and 
never moved. 

In this freezing 
mained. 

Presently there was a rustling that 
made both crouch. 

It was followed by a croaking noise. 

Christopher made himself small. 

The Hottentot, on the contrary, raised 
his head, and ventured a little way into 
the stream. 

By these means he saw it was some- 
thing very foul, but not terrible. It wasa 
large vulture that had settled on the very 
top of the nearest acacia. 

At this the Hottentot got bolder still, 
and, to the great surprise of Staines, 
began to crawl cautiously into some 
rushes, and through them up the bank. 

The next moment he burst into a mix- 
ture of yelling and chirping and singing, 
and other sounds so manifestly jubilant, 
that the vulture flapped heavily away, 
and Staines emerged in turn, but very 
cautiously. 

Could he believe his eyes? There lay 
the lion, dead as a stone, on his back, 
with his four legs in the air, like wooden 
legs, they were so very dead; and the 
valiant Squat dancing about him, and on 
him, and over him. 


situation they re- 


364 WORKS 

Staines, unable to change his senti- 
ments so quickly, eyed even the dead 
body of the royal beast with awe and 
wonder. What, had he really laid that 
. terrible monarch low, and with a tube 
made in a London shop by men who 
never saw a lion spring, nor heard his 
awful roar shake the air? He stood with 
his heart still beating, and said not a 
word. The shallow Hottentot whipped 
out a large knife, and began to skin the 
king of beasts. Staines wondered he 
could so profane that masterpiece of na- 
ture. He felt more inclined to thank 
God for so great a preservation, and 
then pass reverently on, and leave the 
dead king undesecrated. 

He was roused from his’ solemn 
thoughts by the reflection that there 
might be a lioness about, since there 
were cubs. He took a piece of paper, 
emptied his remaining powder into it, 
and proceeded to dry it in the sun. This 
was soon done; and then he loaded both 
barrels. 

By this time the adroit Hottentot had 
flayed the carcass sufficiently to reveal 
the mortal injury. The projectile had 
entered the chest, and, slanting upward, 
had burst among the vitals, reducing 
them to a gory pulp. The lion must 
have died in the air, when he bounded 
on receiving the fatal shot. : 

The Hottentot uttered a cry of admi- 
ration. ‘‘ Not the lion king of all, nor 
even the white man,’’ he said, ‘* but En- 
feel rifle! ”’ 

Staines’s eyes glittered. ‘‘ You shall 
have it and the horse for your diamond,”’ 
said he eagerly. 

The black seemed a little shaken, but 
did not reply. He got out of it by go- 
ing on with his lion; and Staines eyed 
him, and was bitterly disappointed at not 
getting the diamond even on these terms. 
He began to feel he should never get it. 
They were near the high road; he could 
not keep the Hottentot to himself much 
longer. He felt sick at heart. He had 
wild and wicked thoughts; half hoped 
the lioness would come and kill the Hot- 
tentot, and liberate the jewel that pos- 
sessed his soul. 


OF CHARLES READE. 


At last the skin was off; and the Hot- 
tentot said, ‘‘ Me take this to my kraal, 
and dey all say, ‘Squat a great shooter ; 
kill um lion.’ ”’ 

Then Staines saw another chance for 
him, and summoned all his address for a 
last-effort. ‘No, Squat,’’ said he, “ that 
skin belongs to me. I shot the lion with 
the only rifle that can kill a lion like a 
cat. Yet you would not give me a dia- 
mond—a paltry stone for it. No, Squat, 
if you were to go into your village with 
that lion’s skin, why, the old men would 
bend their heads to you, and say, ‘ Great 
is Squat! He killed the lion, and wears 
his skin.” The young women would all 
fight which should be the wife of Squat. 
Squat would be king of the village.” 

Squat’s eyes began to roll. 

‘¢ And shall I give the skin and the glory 
that is my due to an ill-natured fellow 
who refuses me his paltry diamond for a 
good horse—look at him; and for the 
rifle that kills lions like rabbits—behold 
it; and a hundred pounds in good gold 
and Dutch notes—see; and for the lion’s 
skin and glory and honor and a rich wife, 
and to be king of Africa? Never.’’ 

The Hottentot’s hands and toes began 
to work convulsively. ‘‘ Good master, 
Squat ask pardon. Squat was blind. 
Squat will give the diamond, the great 
diamond of Africa, for the lion’s skin, 
and the king rifle, and the little horse, 
and the gold, and Dutch notes every one 
of them. Dat make just two hundred 
pounds.”’ 

** More like four hundred,”’ cried Staines 
very loud. ‘‘ And how do I know it is a 
diamond? ‘These large stones are the 
most deceitful. Show it me this in- 
stant,’’ said he imperiously. 

‘Iss, master,’’ said the crushed Hot- 
tentot, with the voice of a mouse, and 
put the stone into his hand with a child- 
like faith that almost melted Staines ; 
but he saw he must be firm. ‘‘ Where 
did you find it?’’? he bawled. 

‘*Master,’’ said poor Squat, in depre- 
cating tones, ‘‘my little master at the 
farm wanted plaster. He send to Bul- 
teel’s pan: dere was large lumps. Squat 
say to miners, ‘May we take de large 


A SIMPLETON. 


lumps?’ Dey say, ‘Yes: take de cursed 
lumps we no can break.’ We took de 
cursed lumps. We ride ’em in de cart to 
farm, twenty milses. I beat ’em with 
my hammer. Dey is very hard. More 
dey break my heart dan I break deir 
cursed heads. One day I use strong 
words, like white man, and I hit one 
large lump too hard: he break, and out 
come de white clear stone. Iss, him dia- 
mond. Long time we know him in our 
kraal, because he hard. Long time be- 
fore ever white man know him, tousand 
years ago, we find him, and he make 
us lilly hole in big stone for make 
wheat dust. Him a diamond, blank my 
eyes !”’ 

This was intended as a solemn form of 
asseveration adapted to the white man’s 
habits. 

Yes, reader, he told the truth ; and, 
strange to say, the miners knew the 
largest stones were in those great lumps 
of carbonate. But then the lumps were 
so cruelly hard, they lost all patience with 
them; and so, finding it was no use to 
break some of them, and not all, they re- 
jected them all, with curses; and thus 
this great stone was carted away as rub- 
bish from the mine, and found, like a toad 
in a hole, by Squat. 

‘¢ Well,’’ said Christopher, ‘‘ after all, 
vou are an honest fellow, and I think I 
will buy it. But first you must show me 
out of this wood: lam not going to be 
eaten alive in it for want of the king of 
rifles.’’ 

Squat assented eagerly ; and they 
started at once. They passed the skel- 
eton of the eland: its very bones were 
polished, and its head carried into the 
wood; and, looking back, they saw vul- 
tures busy on the lion. They soon 
cleared the wood. 

Squat handed Staines the diamond— 
when it touched his hand as his own, a 
bolt of ice seemed to run down his back 
and hot water to follow it — and the 
money, horse, rifle, and skin were made 
over to Squat. 

‘Shake hands over it, Squat,’’ said 
Staines. ‘‘ You are hard; but you are 
honest.”’ 


365 


“Iss, master, [a good much hard, and 
honest,’’ said Squat. 

‘* Good by, old fellow ! ”’ 

‘“Good by, master !”’ 

And Squat strutted away, with the 
halter in his hand, horse following him, 
rifle under his arm, and the lion’s skin 
over his shoulders, and the tail trailing, 
a figure sublime in his own eyes, ridicu- 
lous in creation’s. So vanity triumphed 
even inthe wilds of Africa. 

Staines hurried forward on foot, load- 
ing his revolver as he went; for the 
very vicinity of the wood alarmed him 
now he had parted with his trusty 
rifle. 

That night he lay down on the open 
veldt, in his jackal’s skin, with no wea- 
pon but his revolver, and woke with a 
start a dozen times. Just before day- 
break, he scanned the stars carefully, and 
noting exactly where the sun rose, made 
a rough guess at his course, and followed 
it till the sun was too hot; then he crept 
under a ragged bush, hung up his jackal’s 
skin, and sweated there, parched with 
thirst, and gnawed with hunger. When 
it was cooler, he crept on, and found 
water, but no food. He was in torture, 
and began to be frightened ; for he was 
in a desert. He found an ostrich-egg, 
and ate it ravenously. 

Next day hunger took a new form— 
faintness. He could not walk for it: his 
jackal’s skin oppressed ‘him. He lay 
down, exhausted. A horror seized his 
dejected soul. The diamond !—it would 
be his death. No man must so long for 
any earthly thing as he had for this glit- 
tering traitor. ‘Oh, my good horse! 
my trusty rifle!’’ he cried. ‘‘ For what 
have I thrown you away? For starva- 
tion. Misers have been found stretched 
over their gold; and some day my skele- 
ton will be found, and nothing to tell the 
base death I died of, and deserved—noth- 
ing but the cursed diamond. Ay, fiend ! 
glare in my eyes, do!’’ He felt delirium 
creeping over him; and at that a new 
terror froze him. His reason, that he 
had lost once—was he to lose it again? 
He prayed, he wept, he dozed, and forgot 
all. When he woke again, a cool air was 


366 WORKS 
fanning his cheeks, it revived him a little. 
It became almost a breeze. 

And this breeze, as it happened, carried 
on its wings the curse of Africa. There 
loomed in the northwest a cloud of 
singular density, that seemed to expand 
in size as it drew nearer, yet to be still 
more solid, and darken the air. It 
seemed a dust-storm. Staines took out 
his handkerchief, prepared to wrap his 
face in it, not to be stifled. 

But soon there was a whirring and a 
whizzing; and hundreds of locusts flew 
over his head: they were followed by 
thousands—the swiftest of the mighty 
host. They thickened and thickened, till 
the air looked solid, and even that glar- 
ing sun was blackened by the rushing 
mass. Birds of all sorts whirled above, 
and swooped among them. They pep- 
pered Staines all over like shot. They 
stuck in his beard, and all over him: 
they clogged the bushes, carpeted the 
ground; while the darkened air sang as 
with the whirl of machinery. Every bird 
in the air, and beast of the field, graniv- 
orous or carnivorous, was gorged with 
them ; and to these animals was added 
man, for Staines, being famished, and 
remembering the vrow Bulteel, hghted a 
fire, and roasted a handful or two on a 
flat stone: they were delicious. The fire 
once lighted, they cooked themselves ; 
for they kept flying into it. Three hours, 
without interruption, did they darken 
nature, and before the column ceased all 
the beasts of the field came after, gorg- 
ing them so recklessly that Staines could 
have shot an antelope dead with his pistol 
within a yard of him. 

But, to tell the horrible truth, the 
cooked locusts were so nice that he pre- 
ferred to gorge on them along with the 
other animals. 

He roasted another lot for future use, 
and marched on with a good heart. 

But now he got on some rough, scrubby 
ground, and damaged his shoes and tore 
his trousers. 

This lasted a terrible distance; but at 
the end of it came the usual arid ground ; 
and at last he came upon the track of 
wheels and hoofs. He struck it at an 


OF CHARLES 


READE. 


acute angle, and that showed him he had 
made a good line. He limped along it a 
little way slowly, being foot-sore. 

By and by, looking back, he saw a lot 
of rough fellows swaggering along be- 
hind him. Then he was alarmed, terribly 
alarmed, for his diamond. He tore a 
strip off his handkerchief, and tied it cun- 
ningly under his arm-pit as he hobbled 
on. 

The men came up with him. 

‘‘Halloo, mate! Come from the dig- 
gins ?”’ 

ee Vesti 

«¢ What luck ? ”’ 

** Very good.’’ 

“Haw, haw! What, found a fifty 
carat? Show it us.”’ 

‘“‘We found five big stones, my mate 
and me. He is gone to Cape Town to 
sell them, I had no luck when he left 
me, so I have cut it; going to turn 
farmer. Can you tell me how far it is to 
Dale’s Kloof ? ” 

No, they could not tell him that. They 
Swung on; and to Staines their backs 
were a cordial, as we say in Scotland. 

However, his travels were near an end. 
Next morning he saw Dale’s Kloof in the 
distance ; and, as soon as the heat moder- 
ated, he pushed on with one shoe and tat- 
tered trousers ; and, half an hour before 
sunset, he hobbled up to the place. 

It was all bustle. Travelers at the 
door; their wagons and carts under a 
long shed. 

Ucatella was the first to see him com- 
ing, and came and fawned on him with 
delight. Her eyes glistened, her teeth 
gleamed. She patted both his cheeks, 
and then his shoulders, and even his 
knees, and then flew indoors, crying, 
‘My doctor child is come home!’ This 
amused three travelers, and brought out 
Dick with a hearty welcome. 

‘‘But Lordsake, sir, why have you 
come afoot, and a rough road too? 
Look at your shoes! MHalloo! What 
is come of the horse? ”’ 

‘‘T exchanged him for a diamond.”’ 

*«The deuce you did! And the rifle ? ”’ 

* Kixchanged that for the same dia- 
mond.”’ 


A SIMPLETON. 


‘« It ought to be a big un.”’ 

a aL te kak 

Dick made a wry face. ‘‘ Well, sir, 
you know best. You are welcome, on 
horse or afoot. You are just in time. 
Phoebe and me are just sitting down to 
dinner. ”’ 

He took him into a little room they had 
built for their own privacy, for they liked 
to be quiet now and then, being country 
bred; and Phoebe was putting their 
dinner on the table when Staines limped 
in. 

She gave a joyful cry, and turned 
red all over. ‘Oh, doctor!’ Then 
his travel-torn appearance struck her. 
‘But, dear heart! what a figure! 
Where’s Reginald? Oh, he’s not far 
off, J know ?.”’ 

And she flung open the window, and 
almost flew through it in a moment to 
look for her husband. 

“Reginald ?”’ said Staines. \ Then, 
turning to Dick Dale, ‘“‘ Why, he is 
here, isn’t he? ”’ 

‘No, sir; not without he is just come 
with you.”’ 

‘With me?—no. You know, we 
parted at the diggings. Come, Mr. 
Dale, he may not be here now; but 
he has been here; he must have been 
here.”’ 

Phoebe, who had not lost a word, 
turned round, with all her high color 
gone, and her cheeks getting paler and 
paler. ‘Oh, Dick! what is this?” 

“JT don’t understand it,’’ said Dick. 
‘What ever made you think he was 
here, sir? ”’ 

Why, I tell you he left me to come 
here.”’ 

“Left you, sir!’’ faltered Pheebe. 
‘¢ Why, when, where ?”’ 

“At the diggings—ever so long 
ago.” 

‘Blank him! That is just like him, 
the uneasy fool!’ roared Dick. 

‘“No, Mr. Dale, you should not say 
that. He left me, with my consent, to 
come to Mrs. Falcon here, and consult 
her about disposing ‘of our diamonds.’’ 

‘* Diamonds, diamonds ! ”’ cried Phoebe. 
“Oh! they make me tremble. How 


367 
could you let him go alone? You didn’t 
let him go on foot, I hope ? ”’ 

‘Oh, no,. Mrs. Falcon. He had his 
horse and his rifle, and money to spend 
on the road.’’ 

‘* How long ago did he leave you, sir ?”’ 

‘*{—I am sorry to say it was five weeks 
ago.’ 

‘‘ Hive weeks, and not come yet. Ah! 
the wild beasts! the diggers! the mur- 
derers! He is dead !”’ 

‘‘God forbid!’ faltered Staines; but 
his own blood began to run cold. 

‘He is dead. He has died between 
this and the dreadful diamonds. I shall 
never see my darling again. He is dead; 
he is dead.’’ 

She rushed out of the room and out of 
the house, throwing her arms above her 
head in despair, and uttering those words 
of agony again and again in every variety 
of anguish. 

At such horrible moments women al- 
ways swoon—if we are to believe the 
dramatists. I doubt if there is one grain 
of truth in this. Women seldom swoon 
at all, unless their bodies are unhealthy, 
or weakened by the reaction that follows 
so terrible a shock as this. At all events, 
Phoebe, at first, was strong and wild as 
a lion, and went to and fro outside the 
house, unconscious of her body’s motion, 
frenzied with agony, and but one word 
on her lips, ‘‘He is dead; he is dead !’’ 

Dick followed her, crying like a child, 
but master of himself: he got his people 
about her, and half carried her in again; 
then shut the door in all their faces. 

He got the poor creature to sit down; 
and she began to rock and moan, with 
her apron over her head, and her brown 
hair loose about her. 

‘Why should he be dead ? ”’ said Dick. 
‘‘ Don’t give a man up like that, Phoebe.— 
Doctor, tell us more about it. Oh, man! 
how could you let him out of your sight ? 
You knew how fond the poor creature 
was of him.”’ 

“ But) that was it; Mr. Dale,’ said 
Staines. ‘‘I knew his wife must pine for 
him; and we had found six large dia- 
monds, and a handful of smallones. But 
the market was glutted; and, to get a 


368 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


better price, he wanted to go straight to 
Cape Town. But I said, ‘No: go and 
show them to your wife, and see whether 
she will go to Cape Town.’ ”’ 

Phoebe began to listen, aS was evident 
by her moaning more softly. 

‘Might he not have gone straight to 
Cape Town?” Staines hazarded this 
timidly. 

“Why should he do that, sir? 
Kloof is on the road.’’ 

‘“Qnly on one road. Mr. Dale, he was 
well armed with rifle and revolver; and 
I cautioned him not to show a diamond on 
the road. Who would molest him? dia- 
monds don’t show, like gold. Who was 
to know he had three thousand pounds 
hidden under his armpits and in two bar- 
rels of his revolver? ”’ 

‘‘'Three thousand pounds ! ’”’ cried Dale. 
‘You trusted him with three thousand 
pounds ?”’ 

“Certainly. They were worth about 
three thousand pounds in Cape Town, 
and half as much again in—’’ 

Phoebe started up ina moment. ‘Thank 
God!’’ she cried. ‘‘ There’s hope for me. 
Oh, Dick! he is not dead: HE HAS ONLY 
DESERTED ME.”’ 

And with these strange and pitiable 
words, she fell to sobbing, as if her great 
heart would burst at last. 


Dale’s 


CHA PARR eX Xone 


THERE came a reaction ; and Phoebe was 
prostrated with, grief and alarm. Her 
brother never doubted now that Regi- 
nald had run to Cape Town for a lark. 
But, Phoebe, though she thought so too, 


could not be sure; and so the double 


agony of bereavement and desertion tor- 


tured her by turns, and almost together. 


For the first time these many years she 
was so crushed she could not go about 
her business, but lay on a little sofa in 
her own room, and had the blinds down ; 


for her head ached so she could not bear 
the light. 

She conceived a bitter resentment 
against Staines, and told Dick never to 
let him into her sight, if he did not want 
to be her death. 

In vain Dick made excuses for him: 
she would hear none. For once she was 
as unreasonable as any other living wo- 
man. She could see nothing but that she 
had been happy, after years of misery, 
and should be happy now if this man had 
never entered her house. ‘‘ Ah, Colly!”’ 
she cried, ‘‘ you were wiser than I was. 
You as good as told me he would make 
me smart for lodging and curing him. 
And I was so happy !”’ 

Dale communicated this as delicately 
as he could to Staines. Christopher 
was deeply grieved and wounded. He 
thought it unjust; but he knew it was 
natural. He said humbly, “I feel guilty 
myself, Mr. Dale; and yet, unless I had 
possessed omniscience, what could I do? 
I thought of her in all—poor thing, poor 
thing !’’ 

The tears were in his eyes; and Dick 


| Dale went awa y scratching his head, and 


thinking it over. The more he thought, 
the less he was inclined to condemn 
hin. 

Staines himself was much troubled in 
mind, and lived on thorns. He wanted 
to be off to England ; grudged every day, 
every hour, he spent in Africa. But Mrs. 
Falcon was his benefactress : he had been 
for months and months garnering up a 
heap of gratitude toward her. He had 
not the heart to leave her bad friends, 
and in misery. , He kept hoping Falcon 
would return or write. 

Two days after his return, he was 
seated, disconsolate, gluing garnets and 
carbuncles on toa broad tapering bit of 
lamb-skin, when Ucatella came to him 
and said, ‘‘ My doctor child sick ? ”’ 

‘*No, not sick, but miserable.’? And 
he explained to her, as well as he could, 
what had passed. ‘‘ But,’’ said he, ‘‘I 
would not mind the loss of the diamonds 
now, if Iwas only sure he was alive. I 
think most of poor, poor Mr.s Falcon.’’ 

While Ucatella pondered this, but with 


A SIMPLETON. 


one eye of demure curiosity on the coro- 
net he was making, he told her it was for 
her; he had not forgot her at the mines. 
‘* These stones,’’ Said he, “‘ are not valued 
there; but see how glorious they are! ”’ 

In a few minutes he had finished the 
coronet, and gave it her. She uttered a 
chuckle of delight, and, with instinctive 
art, bound it, in a turn of her hand, about 
her brow ; and then Staines himself was 
struck dumb with amazement. The car- 
buncles gathered from those mines looked 
like rubies, so full of fire are they, and of 
enormous size. The chaplet had twelve 
great carbuncles in the center, and went 
off by gradations into smaller garnets by 
the thousand. They flashed their blood- 
red flames in the African sun; and the 
head of Ucatelia, grand before, became 
the head of the Sphinx, encircled with a 
coronet of fire. She bestowed a look of 
rapturous gratitude on Staines, and then 
glided away, like the stately Juno, to ad- 
mire herself in the nearest glass, like any 
other coquette, black, brown, yellow, cop- 
per, or white. 

That very day, toward sunset, she 
burst upon Staines quite suddenly, with 
her coronet gleaming on her magnificent 
head, and her eyes like coals of fire, and 
under her magnificent arm, hard as a 
rock, a boy kicking and struggling in 
vain. She was furiously excited, and, 
for the first time, showed signs of the 
savage in the whites of her eyes, which 
seemed to turn the glorious pupils into 
semicircles. She clutched Staines by 
the shoulder with her left hand, and 
swept along with the pair, like dark 
Fate, or as potent justice sweeps away 
a pair of culprits, and carried them to 
the little window, and cried, ‘‘ Open, 
open !”’ 

Dick Dale was at dinner. Phoebe lying 
down. Dick got up rather crossly, and 
threw open the window. ‘‘ What is up 
now ?’’ said he crossly. He was like two 
or three more Englishmen—hated to be 
bothered at dinner time. 

‘*Dar,’’ screamed Ucatella, setting 
down Tim, but holding him tight by 
the shoulder: ‘‘now, you tell what you 
see that night, you lilly Gaffir trash: if 


369 


you not tell, I kill you DEAD.’’ And 
she showed the whites of her eyes, like 
a wild beast. 

Tim, thoroughly alarmed, quivered out 
that he had seen lilly master ride up to 
the gate one bright night, and look in, 
and Tim thought he was going in; but 
he changed his mind, and galloped away 
that way: and the monkey pointed 
south. 

‘*And why couldn’t you tell us this 
before ?’’ questioned Dick. 

‘*Me mind de sheep,” said Tim apolo- 
getically. ‘‘Menot mind de lilly master :. 
jackals not eat him.” 

‘You no more sense dan 
yourself,’’? said Ucatella loftily. 

‘“*No, no! God bless you both,’’ cried 
poor Pheebe. ‘‘ Now I know the worst ; ”’ 
and a great burst of tears relieved her 
suffering heart. 

Dick went out softly. When he got 
outside the door, he drew them all apart 
and said, ‘‘ Yuke, you are a good-hearted 
girl, Dll never forget this while I live. 
And, Tim, there’s a shilling for thee ; but 
don’t you go and spend it in Cape smoke: 
that is poison to whites, and destruction 
to blacks.”’ 

NG, master,”’ solide Liniae eee barca 
buy much bread, and make my tomach 
tiff ;°’ then, with a glance of reproach at 
the domestic caterer, Ucatella, ‘“‘ I almost 
never have my tomach tiff.’ 

Dick left his sister alone an hour or 
two, to have her cry out. 

When he went back to her there was a 
change. ‘The brave woman no longer 
lay prostrate. She went about her busi- 
ness; only she was always either crying, 
or drowning her tears. 

He brought Dr. Staines in. Phoebe 
instantly turned her back on him with 
a Shudder there was no mistaking. 

“T had better go,’’ said Staines. 
‘Mrs. Falcon will never forgive me.”’ 

“She will have to quarrel with me 
else,’* said Dick steadily. ‘Sit -you 
down, doctor. Honest folk like you 
and me and Phoebe wasn’t made to 
quarrel for want of looking a thing all 
round. My sister, she hasn’t looked it 
ali round, and I have— Come, Pheeb, 


a sheep 


370, 


tis no use your blinding yourself. How 
was the poor doctor to know your hus- 
band is a blackguard ? ”’ 

“He is not a blackguard. 
you say that to my face ? ’’ 
- “#He is a blackguard, and always was; 
and now he is a thief to boot. He has 
stolen those diamonds: you know that 
very well.’’ 

“Gently, Mr. Dale; you forget: they 
are aS much his as mine.”’ 

« Well, and if half a sheep is mine, and 
I take the whole and sell him, and keep 
the money, what is that but stealing? 
Why, I wonder at you, Pheeb! You 
was always honest yourself ; and yet you 
see the doctor robbed by your man, and 
that does not trouble you. What has he 
done to deserve it? He has been a good 
friend to us. He has put us on the road. 
We did little more than keep the pot 
boiling before he came—well, yes, we 
stored grain: but whose advice has 
turned that grain to gold, I might say ? 
Well, what’s his offense? He trusted 
the diamonds to your man, and sent 
him to you. Is he the first honest man 
that has trusted a rogue? How was he 
to know? Likely he judged the husband 
by the wife. Answer me one thing, 
Pheeb. If he makes away with fifteen 
hundred pounds that is his, or partly 
yours—for he has eaten your bread ever 
since | knew him—and fifteen hundred 
more that is the doctor’s, where shall 
we find fifteen hundred pounds all in a 


How dare 


moment to pay the doctor back his 
Own ?.°” 
‘‘My honest friend,’? said Staines, 


‘you are tormenting yourself with shaw 
dows. I don’t believe Mr. Falcon will 
wrong me of a shilling; and, if he does, 
I shall quietly repay myself out of the 
big diamond. Yes, my dear friends, I 
did not throw away your horse, nor your 
rifle, nor your money; I gave them all, 
and the lion’s skin—I gave them all—for 
this.” 

And he laid the big diamond on the 
table. 

It was as big as a walnut, and of the 
purest water. 


Dick Dale glanced at it stupidly. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


Phoebe ‘turned her back on it with a 
cry of horror, and then came slowly - 
round by’ degrees; and her eyes were 
fascinated by the royal gem. 

“Yes,” said Staines sadly, ‘“‘I had to 
strip myself of all to buy it; and when I 
had got it, how proud I was! and how 
happy I thought we should all be over it! 
for itis half yours, half mine. Yes, Mr. 
Dale, there lies six thousand pounds that 
belong to Mrs. Falcon,” 

‘‘Six thousand pounds! ’’ cried Dick. 

‘‘] am sure of it. And so, if your sus- 
picions are correct, and poor Falcon 
should yield to a sudden temptation, and 
spend all that money, I shall just coolly 
deduct it from your share of this wonder- 
ful stone ::so make your mind easy. But 
no: if Falcon is really so wicked as to 
desert his happy home, and so mad as to 
spend thousands in a month or two, let 
us go and save him.’’ 

‘«‘That is. my business,’’ said Phoebe. 
“T am going in the mail-cart to-mor- 
row.’ 


“Well, you won’t go alone,’”’ said 
Dick. 
‘““Mrs. Falcon,” said Staines. implor- 


ingly, ‘“‘let me go with you.”’ 

‘‘Thank you, sir. My brothercan take 
care of me.”’ 

‘‘“Me! You had better not take me. 
If I catch hold of him, by ——I’ll break 
his neck, or his back, or his leg, or some- 
thing: he’ll never run away from you 
again if I lay hands on him,’ replied 
Dick. 


“JT’llgo alone. You are both against 


me.”’ 
‘“*“No, Mrs. Falcon. I am not,’’ said 
Staines. ‘‘ My heart bleeds for you.’’ 


‘Don’t you demean yourself, praying 
her,’ said Dick. ‘It’s a public convey-. 
ance: you have no need to ask her 
leave.’’ 

«That is true: I cannot hinder folk 
from going to Cape Town the same day,’” 
said Phoebe sullenly. 

“Tf I might presume to advise, I 
would take little Tommy.’’ 

‘What! all that road! Do you want. 
me to lose my child as well as my 
mane” 


A SIMPLETON. | 371 


“Oh! Mrs. Falcon !”’ 

‘““Don’t speak to her, doctor, to get 
your nose snapped off: give her time, 
She’ll come to her senses before she 
dies.”’ 

Next day Mrs. Falcon and Staines 
started for Cape Town. Staines paid 
her every attention when opportunity 
offered. But she was sullen and gloomy, 
and held no converse with him. 

He landed her at an inn, and then told 
her he would go at once to the jeweler’s. 
He asked her piteously would she lend 
him a pound or two to prosecute his re- 
searches. She took out her purse with- 
out a word, and lent him two pounds. 
He began to scour the town. ‘The jew- 
elers he visited could tell him nothing. 
At last he came to a shop, and there he 
found Mrs. Falcon making her inquiries 
independently. She said coldly, ‘‘ You 
had better come with me, and get your 
money and things.”’’ 

She took him to the bank—it happened 
to be the one she did business with—and 
said, ‘“‘This is Dr. Christie, come for his 
money and jewels.”’ 

There was some demur at this: but 
the cashier recognized him; and, Phoebe 
making herself responsible, the money 
and jewels were handed over. 

Staines whispered Phoebe. 
sure the jewels are mine ? ”’ 

«¢They were found on you, sir.”’ 

Staines took them, looking confused. 
He did not know what to think. When 
they got into the street again, he told 
her it was very kind of her to think of his 
interest at all. 

No answer. She was not going to 
make friends with him over such a trifle 
as that. 

By degrees, however, Christopher’s 
zeal on her behalf broke the ice; and, 
besides, as the search proved unavailing, 
she needed sympathy; and he gave it 
her, and did not abuse her husband, as 
Dick Dale did. 

One day, in the street, after a long 
thought, she said to him, ‘‘ Didn’t you 
say, sir, you gave him a letter for me?”’ 

**T gave him two letters: one of them 
was to you.”’ 


‘¢ Are you 


‘*Could you remember what you said 
In it?’ 

‘Perfectly. I begged you, if you 
should go to England, to break the 
truth to my wife. She is very excit- 


able; and sudden joy has killed ere 
now. I gave you particular instruc- 
tions.”’ 


*‘ And you were very wise. But what- 
ever could make you think I would go to 
England ?”’ 

‘‘He told me you only wanted an ex- 
cuse.’’ 

AO ane 

“When he told me that, I caught at 
it, of course. It was all the world to me 
to get my Rosa told by such a kind, 
good, sensible friend as you: and, Mrs. 
Falcon, I had no scruple about troubling 
you; because I knew the stones would 
sell for at least a thousand pounds more 
in England than here, and that would 
pay your expenses.”’ 

“T, see,  sir;) 1) see, “Lwas. ‘very. 
natural: you love your wife.”’ 

‘‘ Better than my life.”’ 

« And he told you I only wanted an ex- 
cuse to go to England ? ”’ 

‘‘He did, indeed. It was not true? ”’ 

‘‘Tt was anything but true. I had suf- 
fered so in England! I had been so hap- 
py here !—too happy to last. Ah! well, 
it is allover. Let us think of the matter 
in hand. Sure that was not the only 
letter you gave my husband? Didn’t 
you write to her ?”’ 

“‘Of course I did; but that was in- 
closed to you, and not to be given to her 
until you had broken the joyful news to 
her. Yes, Mrs. Falcon, I wrote, and told 
her everythinge—my loss at sea; how I 
was saved, after, by your kindness; our 
journeys—from Cape Town, and then to 
the diggings; my sudden good fortune, 
my hopes, my joy. Oh, my poor Rosa! 
and now I suppose she will never get it. 
It is too cruel of him. I shall go home 
by the next steamer. I can’t stay here 
any longer, for you or anybody. Oh! 
and I inclosed my ruby ring, that she 
gave me; for | thought she might not 
believe you without that.”’ 

‘*Let me think,’’ said Phoebe, turning 


BY 
ashy pale. ‘‘For mercy’s sake, let me 
think.’’ 


‘He has read both those letters, sir. 
She will never see hers, any more than I 
- shall see mine.”’ 

She paused again, thinking harder and 
harder. 


‘We must take two places in the next 
mail-steamer. I must look after my hus- 
band, AND YOU AFTER YOUR WIFE.”’ 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


Mrs. FALcoN’s bitter feeling against 
Dr. Staines did not subside: it merely 
went out of sight a little. They were 
thrown together by potent  circum- 
stances, and, in a manner, connected 
by mutual obligations; and an open 
rupture seemed too unnatural. Still 
Phoebe was a woman, and, blinded by 
her love for her husband, could not for- 
give the innocent cause of their present 
unhappy separation; though the fault 
lay entirely with Falcon. 


Staines took her on board the steamer 


and paid her every attention. She was 
also civil to him; but it was a cold and 
constrained civility. 

About a hundred miles from land, the 
steamer stopped; and the passengers 
soon learned there was something wrong 
with her machinery. In fact, after due 
consultation, the captain decided to put 
pack. 

This irritated and distressed Mrs. 
Falcon so, that the captain, desirous to 
oblige her, hailed a fast schooner that 
tacked across her bows, and gave Mrs. 
Falcon the option of going back with 
him, or going on in the schooner with 
whose skipper he was acquainted. 

Staines advised her on no account to 
trust to sails, when she could have steam 
with only a delay of four or five days. 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


But she said, ‘“‘ Anything, sooner than 
sor back. Teican’t; ‘1 can’t, on suéhaan 
errand.’’ 

Accordingly, she was put on board the 
schooner; and Staines, after some hesi- 
tation, felt bound to accompany her: 

It proved a sad error. Contrary winds 
assalled them the very next day, and 
with such severity that they had re- 
peatedly to lie to. 

On one of these occasions, with a ship 
reeling under them like a restive horse, 
and the waves running mountains high, 
poor Pheebe’s terrors overmastered both 
her hostility and her reserve. ‘* Doctor,”’ 
said she, ‘‘1 believe ’tis God’s will we 
shall never see England. I must try 
and die more like a Christian than I 
have lived, forgiving all who have 
wronged me, and you, that have been 
my good friend and my worst enemy ; 
but you did not mean it. Sir, what has 
turned me against you so—your wife 
was my husband’s sweetheart before he 
married me.”’ 

‘‘My wife your husband’s — you are 
dreaming..”’ 

‘Nay, sir: once she came in my shop, 
and I saw directly 1 was nothing to him, 
and he owned italltome. He had courted 
her, and she jilted him. So he said. 
Why should he tell me a lie about that? 
I’d lay my life ’tis true. And now you 
have sent him to her your own self; 
and, at sight of her, I shall be noth- 
ing again. Well, when this ship goes 
down, they can marry, and I hope he 
will be happy, happier than I can make 
him, that tried my best, God knows.’’ 

This conversation surprised Staines not 
a little. However, he said, with great 
warmth, it was false. His wife had 
danced and flirted with some young gen- 
tleman at one time, when there was a 
brief misunderstanding between him and 
her; but sweetheart she had never had, 
except him. He had courted her fresh 
from school. ‘‘Now, my good soul,”’ 
said he, ‘‘make your mind easy. The 
ship is a good one, and well handled, 
and in no danger whatever; and my 
wife is in no danger from your husband. 
Since you and your brother tell me that 


A. SIMPLETON. 


he is a villain, Iam bound to believe you. 
But my wife is an angel. In our miser- 
able hour of parting she vowed not to 
marry again, should I be taken from 


her. Marry again! what am I talking 
of? Why, if he visits her at all, it will 


be to let her know I am alive, and give 
her my letter. Do you mean to tell 
me she will listen to vows of love from 
him, when her whole heart is in rap- 
ture for me? Such nonsense !”’ 

This burst of his did not affront her, 
and did comfort her. | 

At last the wind abated; and, after 
a wearisome calm, a light breeze came, 
and the schooner crept homeward. 

Phoebe restrained herself for several 
days; but at last she came back to the 
subject: this time it was in an apolo- 
getic tone at starting. ‘I know you 
think me a foolish woman,’’ she said ; 
‘but my poor Reginald could never re- 
sist a pretty face; and she is so lovely! 
And you should have seen how he turned 
when she came into my place. Oh, sir! 
there has been more between them than 
you know of ; and, when I think that he 
will have been in England so many 
months before we get there, oh, doc- 
tor! sometimes I feel as I should go 
mad. My head it is like a furnace, and 
see, my brow is all wrinkled again.’’ 

Then Staines tried to comfort her; as- 
sured her she was tormenting herself 
idly: her husband would, perhaps, have 
spent some of the diamond money on his 
amusement; but what if he had, he 
should deduct it out of the big diamond, 
which was also their joint property ; and 
the loss would hardly be felt. ‘‘ As to 
my wife, madam, I have but one anxiety 
—lest he should go blurting it out that I 
am alive, and almost kill her with joy.”’ 

“He will not do that, sir. He is no 
fool.”’ 

‘Tam glad of it; for there is nothing 
else to fear.”’ 

‘‘Man, I tell you there is everything to 
fear. You don’t know him asI do, nor 
his power over women.”’ 

‘‘Mrs. Falcon, are you bent on affront- 
ing me?’’ 


‘“‘No, sir. Heaven forbid !”’ 


3¢3 


“Then please to close this subject for- 
ever. In three weeks we shall be in 
England.’’ 

“Ay; but he 
months.’’ 

He bowed stiffly to her, went to his 
cabin, and avoided the poor foolish 
woman aS much as he could without 
seeming too unkind. 


has been there six 


CHAPTER XXV. 


Mrs. STAINES made one or two move- 
ments—to stop Lord Tadcaster—with her 
hand, that expressive feature with which, 
at such times, a sensitive woman can do 
all but speak. 

When, at last, he paused for her reply, 
she said, “‘Me marry again! Oh, for 
shame !”’ 

‘Mrs. Staines, Rosa, you will marry 
again some day.” 

‘““Never. Me take another husband 
after such a man as I have-lost! I 
should be a monster. Besides—”’ 

‘* Besides what ?”’ 

‘No matter. Oh, Lord Tadcaster! you 
have been so kind to me, so sympathiz- 
ing! You made me believe you loved 
my Christopher too; and now you have 
spoiled all. It is too cruel.”’ 

‘*Oh, Mrs. Staines, do you think me 
capable of feigning? don’t you see my 
love for you has taken me by surprise ? 
But how could I visit you, look on you, 
hear you, mingle my regrets with yours? 
Yours were the deepest, of course; but 
mine were honest.’’ 

‘*T believe it.”? And she gave him her 
hand. He held it, and kissed it, and cried 
over it, as the young will, and implored 
her, on his knees, not to condemn herself 
to life-long widowhood, and him to de- 
spair. 

Then she cried too; but she was firm, 
and by degrees she made him see that 
her heart was inaccessible. 


Ne ee ere entail 


a I me 
ear ere 


eanpre —ahn 


teens ce ne ener 


Se oe 


374 


Then, at last, he submitted, with tear- 
ful eyes, but a valiant heart. 

She offered friendship timidly. 

But he was too much of a man to fall 
into that trap. ‘‘No,’’ he said: ‘‘I could 
not, I could not. Love, or nothing.’’ 

«You are right,’’ said she pityingly. 
‘“ Horgive me. In my selfishness and my 
usual folly, I did not see this coming on, 
or I would have spared you this mortifi- 
cation.’’ 

‘‘ Never mind that,’’ gulped the little 
earl. ‘I shall always be proud I knew 
you, and proud I loved you, and offered 
you my hand.’’ 

Then the magnanimous little fellow 
blessed her, and left her, and discontinued 
his visits. 

Mr. Lusignan found her crying, and 
got the truth out of her. He was in de- 
spair. Heremonstrated kindly, but firm- 
ly. Truth compels me to say that she po- 
litely ignored him. He observed that 
phenomenon, and said, ‘‘ Very well, then, 
I shall telegraph for Uncle Philip.”’ 

““Do,’’ said the rebel. ‘ He is always 
welcome.”’ 

Philip telegraphed ; came down that 
evening; likewise his little black bag. 
He found them in the drawing-room ; 
papa with the Pall Mall Gazette, Rosa 
seated, sewing, at a lamp. She made 
little Christie's clothes herself; fancy 
that! 

Having ascertained that the little boy 
was well, Philip, adroitly hiding that he 
had come down torn with anxiety on that 
head, inquired, with a show of contempt- 
uous indifference, whose cat was dead. 

‘* Nobody’s,’’ said Lusignan crossly. 
““Do you see that young lady, stitching 
there so demurely ?”’ 

Philip put on his spectacles. 

‘7 see her,’’ said he. ‘She does look 
a little too innocent. None of them are 
really so innocent as all that. Has she 
been swearing at the nurse, and boxing 
her ears? ”’ 

‘* Worse than that. She has been and 
refused the Earl of Tadcaster.’’ 

‘* Refused him? What! has that little 
monkey had the audacity ? ”’ 

** The condescension, you mean ? ”’ 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


6S Wesics 

‘* And she has refused him ? ”’ 

‘* And twenty thousand a vear.”’ 

<“What immorality !”’ 

‘Worse. What absurdity!” 

‘* How is it to be accounted for? Is it 
the old story: ‘I could never love him ?’ 
No: that’s inadequate ; for they all love 
a title and twenty thousand a year.”’ 

Rosa sewed on in demure and absolute 
silence. 

‘“‘She ignores us,’’ said Philip. ‘ It 
is intolerable. She does not appreciate 
our politeness in talking at her. Let us 
arraign her before our sacred tribunal, 
and have her into court. Now, mistress, 
the Senate of Venice is assembled ; and 
you must be pleased to tell us why you 
refused a title and twenty thousand a 
year, with a small but symmetrical earl 
tacked on.’’ 

Rosa laid down her work, and said 
quietly, ‘‘ Uncle, almost the last words 
that passed between me and my Chris- 
topher, we promised each other solemnly 
never to marry again till death should us 
part. You know how deep my sorrow 
has been that I can find so few wishes of 
my lost Christopher to obey. Well, to- 
day I have had an opportunity at last. I 
have obeyed my own lost one. It has 
cost me a tear or two; but, for all that, 
it has given me one little gleam of hap- 
piness. Ah, foolish woman, that obeys 
too late!’’ | 

And with this the tears began to run. 

All this seemed a little too high-flown 
to Mr. Lusignan. ‘“ There,’’? said he, 
“see on what a straw her mind turns! 
So, but for that, you would have done 
the right thing, and married the ear] ? ”’ 

““T dare say | should—at the time—to 
stop his crying.”’ 

And, with this listless remark, she 
quietly took up her sewing again. 

The sagacious Philip looked at her 
sadly. He thought to himself how piti- 
ous it was to see so young and lovely a 
creature that had given up all hope of 
happiness for herself. These being his 
real thoughts, he expressed himself as 
follows: ‘‘ We had better drop this sub- 
ject, sir. This young lady will take us 


| A SIMPLETON. 


potent, grave, and reverend signors out 
of our depth, if we don’t mind.”’ 

But the moment he got her alone he 
kissed her paternally, and said, ‘‘ Rosa, 
it is not lost on me, your fidelity to the 
dead. As years roll on, and your deep 
wound first closes, then skins, then 
heals—’’ 

“¢ Ah, let me die first—”’ 

“Time and nature will absolve you 
from that vow; but bless you for think- 
ing this can never be. Rosa, your folly 
of this day has made you my heir: so 
never let money tempt you, for you have 
enough, and will have more than enough 
when I go.’’ 

He was as good as his word; altered 
his will next day, and made Rosa his re- 
siduary legatee. 

When he had done this, foreseeing no 
fresh occasion for his services, he pre- 
pared for a long visit to Italy. He was 
packing up his things to go there, when 
he received a line from Lady Cicely Tre- 
herne, asking him to call on her profes- 
sionally. As the lady’s servant brought 
it, he sent back a line to say he no longer 
practiced medicine, but would call on her 
as a friend in an hour’s time. 

He found her reclining, the picture of 
lassitude. ‘‘ How good of youtocome! ”’ 
she drawled. 

‘What’s the 
bruskly. 

J] wish to cawnsult you about my- 
self. I think, if anybody can brighten 
me up, itis you. Ifeel such a languor! 
such a want of spirit! and I get palaa, 
and that is not desiwable.’’ 

He examined her tongue and the white 
of her eye, and told her, in his blunt way, 
she ate and drank too much. 

** Excuse me, sir,’’ said she stiffly. 

‘‘T mean too often. Now, let’s see. 
Cup of tea in bed, of a morning ?”’ 

SeYeaas:’7 

‘¢ Dinner at two ?’’ 

“* We call it luncheon.”’ 

«« Are you a ventriloquist ? ” 

No}? 

“Then it is only your lips call it lunch- 
eon. Your poor stomach, could it speak, 
would call it dinner. Afternoon tea? ”’ 


matter?’ said he, 


375 


«VRS 7° 

‘“‘ At half-past seven another dinner. 
Tea after that. Your poor unhappy 
stomach gets no rest. You eat pas- 
try 

‘*T confess it.”’ 

‘‘ And sugar in a dozen forms ?”’ 

She nodded. 

‘Well, sugar is a poison to your tem- 
perament. Now, I’ll set you up, if you 
can obey. Give up your morning dram, 
or—”’ 

“ What dwam ?”’ 

‘*Tea in bed, before eating. Can’t you 
see that is a dram? Animal food twice 
aday. No wine but a little claret and 
water; no pastry, no sweets, and play 
battledoor with one of your male sub- 
jects.”’ 

‘ Battledaw ! 
that ? ’”’ 

‘No: you will get talking and not 
play ad sudorem.”’ 

‘¢ Ad sudawem ! what is that ?’’ 

‘« Ins earnest. *’ 

‘* And will sudawem and the west put 
me in better spiwits, and give me a 
tinge? ”’ 

‘Tt will incarnadine the lily, and make 
you the happiest young lady in England, 
as you are the best.’’ 

“‘Oh, dear! I should like to: be much 
happier than | am good, if we could man- 
age it among us.”’ 

“We will manage it among us; for, if 
the diet allowed should not make you 
boisterously gay, I have a remedy be- 
hind, suited to your temperament. I 
am old-fashioned, and believe in the 
temperaments.”’ 

“And what is that wemedy ?”’ 

“Try diet and hard exercise first.’’ 

“Oh, yes! but let me know that 
wemedy.’’ 

“T warn you it is what we call} in 
medicine an heroic one.’’ 

“Never mind. I am despewate.”’ 

‘* Well, then, the heroic remedy—to be 
used only as a desperate resort, mind— 
you must marry an Irishman.’’ 

This took the lady’s breath away. 

‘*Mawwy an ice man? ”’ 

“* A nice man; no! That means a fool. 


Won’t a lady do for 


f 


376 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


Mary scientifically —a thing eternally 
neglected. Marry an Hibernian gentle- 
man, a being as mercurial as you are 
lymphatic.”’ 

‘Mercurial! lymphatic !—’’ 

‘Oh! hard words break 
MA atiioee 

‘‘No, sir. And it is very curious. No, 
I won’t tell you. Yes, Il will. Hem!—Il 
think I have noticed one.”’ 

“¢One what ? ”’ 

‘¢One Iwishman dangling after me.”’ 

‘Then your ladyship has only to 
tighten the cord, and he’s done for.”’ 

Having administered this prescription, 
our laughing philosopher went off to 
Italy ; and there fell in with some coun- 
trymen to his mind: so he accompanied 
them to Egypt and Palestine. 

His absence, and Lord Tadcaster’s, 
made Rosa Staines’s life extremely 
monotonous. Day followed day, and 
week followed week, each so unvarying, 
that, on a retrosnect, three months 
seemed like one day. 

And I think, at last, youth and nature 
began to rebel, and secretly to crave 
some little change or incident to ruffle 
the stagnant pool. Yet she would not 
go into society, and would only receive 
two or three dull people at the villa: so 
She made the very monotony which was 
beginning to tire her, and nursed a sacred 
grief she had no need to nurse, it was so 
truly genuine. 

She was in this forlorn condition, when, 
one morning, a carriage drove to the 
door, and a card was brought up to her— 
“Mr. Reginald Falcon.”’ 


no bones, 


Halcon’s history, between this and our 
last advices, 1s Soon disposed of. 

When, after a little struggle with his 
better angel, he rode past his wife’s gate, 
he intended, at first, only to go to Cape 
Town, sell the diamonds, have a lark, and 
bring home the balance; but, as he rode 
south, his views expanded. He could 
have ten times the fun in London, and 
cheaper: since he could sell the diamonds 
for more money, and also conceal the 
true price. This was the Bohemian’s 
whole mind in the business. He had 


no designs whatever on Mrs. Staines, nor 
did he intend to steal the diamonds, but 
to embezzle a portion of the purchase 
money, and enjoy the pleasures and vices 
of the capital for a few months; then 
back to his milch cow, Phoebe, and lead a 
quiet life till the next uncontrollable fit 
should come upon him along with the 
means of satisfying it. 

On the way, he read Staines’s letter to 
Mrs. Falcon very carefully. He never 
broke the seal of the letter to Mrs. 
Staines. That was to be given her 
when he had broken the good news to 
her; and this he determined to do with 
such skill as should make Dr. Staines 
very unwilling to look suspiciously or ill- 
naturedly into money accounts. 

He reached London, and, being a 
thorough egotist, attended first to his 
own interests. He never went near 
Mrs. Staines until he had visited every 
diamond merchant and dealer in the 
metropolis. He showed the small stones 
to them all; but he showed no more than 
one large stone to each. 

At last he got an offer of £1,200 for the 
small stones, and the same for the large 
yellow stone, and £900 for the second 
largest stone. He took this £900, and 
instantly wrote to Phoebe, telling her he 
had a sudden inspiration to bring the dia- 
monds to England, which he could not fe- 
egret, since he had never done a wiser 
thing. He had sold a single stone fer 
£800, and had sent the doctor’s £400 to 
her account in Cape Town; and, as each 
sale was effected, the half would be so re- 
mitted. She would see by that he was 
wiser than in former days. He should 
only stay so long as might be necessary 
to sell them all equally well. His own 
share he would apply to paying off mort- 
gages on the family estate, of which he 
hoped some day to see her the mistress, 
or he would send it direct to her, which- 
ever she might prefer. 

Now, the main object of this artful let- 
ter was to keep Phoebe quiet, and not 
have her coming after him, of which he 
felt she was very capable. 

The money got safe to Cape Town; 
but the letter to Phoebe miscarried. 


i i a i eile 


A SIMPLETON. 


How this happened was never positively 
known; but the servant of the lodging- 
house was 
stamps off a letter: so, perhaps, she had 
played that game on this occasion. 

By this means, matters took a curious 
turn. Falcon, intending to lull his wife 
into a false security, lulled himself into 
that state instead. 

When he had taken care of himself, and 
got £500 to play the fool with, then he 
condescended to remember his errand of 
mercy ; and he came down to Gravesend 
to see Mrs. Staines. 

On the road, he gave his mind seriously 
to the delicate and dangerous task. It 
did not, however, disquiet him as it would 
you, sir,or you,madam. He had a great 
advantage over you. He was a liar—a 
smooth, ready, accomplished liar—and he 
knew it. 

This was the outline he had traced in 
his mind. He should appear very sub- 
dued and sad; should wear an air of con- 
dolence. But, after a while, should say, 
‘* And yet men have been lost like that, 
and escaped. A man was picked up on 
araft in those very latitudes and brought 
into Cape Town. A friend of mine saw 
him, months after, at the hospital. His 
memory was shaken ; could not tell his 
name: but in other respects he was all 
right again.” 

If Mrs. Staines took fire at this, he 
would say his friend knew all the particu- 
lars, and he would ask him, and so leave 
that to rankle till next visit. And, hav- 
ing planted his germ of hope, he would 
grow it and water it, by visits and corre- 
Spondence, till he could throw off the 
mask and say he was convinced Staines 
was alive; and from that, by other de- 
grees, till he could say, on his wife’s 
authority, that the man picked up at sea, 
and cured at her house, was the very 
physician who had saved her brother’s 
life, and so on to the overwhelming proof 
he carried in the ruby ring and the letter. 

Lam afraid the cunning and dexterity, 
the subtlety and tact, required, interested 
him more in the commission than did the 
benevolence. 

He called, sent up his card, and com- 


afterward detected cutting 


377 


posed his countenance for his part, like 
an actor at the wing. 

‘* Not at home.’’ 

He stared with amazement. 

The history of a ‘“‘ Not at home,”’ is not, 
in general, worth recording; but this is 
an exception. 

On receiving Falcon’s card, Mrs. 
Staines gave a little start and colored 
faintly. She instantly resolved not to 
see him. What! the man she had flirted 
with, almost jilted, and refused to marry 
—he dared to be alive when her Chris- 
topher was dead, and had come there to 
show her he was alive! 

She said ‘* Not at home’’ with a tone 
of unusual sharpness and decision, which 
left the servant in no doubt he must be 
equally decided at the hall door. 

Falcon received the sudden freezer with 
amazement. “ Nonsense,’’ said he. ‘* Not 
at home at this time of the morning—to 
an old friend ! ”’ | 

“Not at home!’’ said the man dog- 
gedly. 

‘¢Oh, very well!’ said Falcon with a 
bitter sneer, and returned to London. 

He felt sure she was at home; and, 
being a tremendous egotist, he said, 
“Oh! allright. If she would rather not 
know her husband is alive, it is all one to 
me.’? And he actually took no more no- 
tice of her for full a week, and never 
thought of her except to chuckle over the 
penalty she was paying for daring to af- 
front his vanity. 

However, Sunday came. He saw a 
dull day before him; and so he relented, 
and thought he would give her another 
trial, 

He went down to Gravesend by boat, 
and strolled toward the villa. 

When he was about a hundred yards 
from the villa, a lady, all in black, came 
out with a nurse and child. 

Falcon knew her figure all that way 
off, and it gave him a curious thrill that 
surprised him. He followed her, and 
was not very far behind her when she 
reached the church. She turned at the 
porch, kissed the child earnestly, and 
gave the nurse some directions; then 
entered the church. 


oe 


378 


““Come,’’ said Falcon, “I’ll have a|to say about your husband, 


look at her, any way.”’ 

He went into the church, and walked 
up a side aisle to a pillar, from which he 
thought he might be able to see the 
whole congregation. And, sure enough, 
there she sat a few yards from him. She 
was lovelier than ever. Mind had grown 
on her face with trouble. An angelic 
expression illuminated her beauty; he 
gazed on her, fascinated. He drank and 
drank her beauty two mortal hours ; and 
when the church broke up, and she went 
home, he was half afraid to follow her, 
for he felt how hard it would be to say 
anything to her but that the old love 
had returned on him with double force. 

However, having watched her home, 
he walked slowly to and fro, composing 
himself for the interview. 

He now determined to make the proc- 
ess of informing her a very long one. 
He would spin it out, and so secure many 
a sweet interview with her: and, who 
knows? he might fascinate her as she 
had him, and ripen gratitude into love, 
as he understood that word. 

He called; he sent in his card. The 
man went in, and came back with a 
sonorous ‘‘ Not at home.’’ 

“Not at home? Nonsense. 
Ss just come in from church.’’ 

‘‘Not at home,’’ said the man, evident- 
ly strong in his instructions. 

Falcon turned white with rage at this 
second affront. ‘‘ All the worse for her,”’ 
said he; and turned on his heel. 

He went home raging with disappoint- 
ment and wounded vanity; and—since 
such love as his is seldom very far from 
hate—he swore she should never know 
from him that her husband was alive. 
He even moralized. ‘‘ This comes of be- 
ing so unselfish,’? said he. ‘I'll give 
that game up forever.”’ 

By and by a mere negative revenge 
was not enough for him; and he set his 
wits to work to make her smart and see 
it. 

He wrote to her from his lodgings: 


Why she 


“DEAR MapaAm—What a pity you are 
never at home to me. I had something 


WORKS OF CHARLES 


trick with water-colors. 


READE. 


that I 
thought might interest you. 
“Yours truly, 
“R. MALCON’ 


Imagine the effect of this abominable 


note. It was like a rock flung into a 
placid pool. It set Rosa trembling all 
over. What could he mean? . 


She ran with it to her father, and 
asked him what Mr. Falcon could mean. 
‘“‘T have no idea,’’ said he. “ You had 
better ask him, not me.’’ 
‘“‘T am afraid it is only to get to see 
me. You know he admired me: once. 
Ah, how suspicious | am getting!” 
Rosa wrote to Falcon: 


‘DEAR StR—Since my bereavement I 
see scarcely anybody. My servant did 
not know you: so I hope you will ex- 
cuse me. If it is too much trouble to 
call again, would you kindly explain 
your note to me by letter. 

‘Yours respectfully, 
‘ROSA STAINES.”’ 


Falcon chuckled bitterly over this. 

““No, my lady,’’ said he, ‘‘I’ll serve 
you out. You shall run after me like a 
little dog. Ihave got the bone that will 
draw you.’ | 

He wrote back coldly to say that the 
matter he had wished to communicate 
was too delicate and important to put on 
paper ; that he would try and get down 
to Gravesend again some day or other, 
but was much occupied, and had already 
put himself to inconvenience. He added, 
in a postscript, that he was always at 
home from four to five. 

Next day he got hold of the servant, 
and gave her minute instructions and a 
guinea. 

Then the wretch got some tools, and 
bored a hole in the partition-wall of his 
sitting-room. The paper had large flow- 
ers. He was artist enough to conceal the 
In his bedroom 
the hole came behind the curtains. 

That very afternoon, as he had foreseen, 
Mrs. Staines called on him. The maid, 
duly instructed, said Mr. Falcon was out, 


A SIMPLETON. 


but would soon return, and she could wait 
his return. The maid being so very civil, 
Mrs. Staines said she would wait a little 
while, and was immediately ushered into 
Falcon’s sitting-room. There she sat 
down, but was evidently ill at ease, rest- 
less, flushed. She could not sit quiet, and 
at last began to walk up and down the 
room, almost wildly. Her beautiful eyes 
glittered, and the whole woman seemed 
on fire. The caitiff, who was watching 
her, saw and gloated on all this, and en- 
joyed to the full her beauty and agita- 
tion, and his revenge for her “ Not at 
homes.”’ 

But, after a long time, there was a re- 
action. She sat down, and uttered some 
plaintive sounds inarticulate, or nearly ; 
and at last she began to cry. 

Then it cost Falcon an effort not to 
come in and comfort her; but he con- 
trolled himself, and kept quiet. 

She rang the bell. She asked for writ- 
ing paper; and she wrote her unseen tor- 
mentor a humble note, begging him, for 
old acquaintance, to call on her, and tell 
her what his mysterious words meant that 
had filled her with agitation. 

This done, she went away, with a deep 
sigh; and Falcon emerged, and pounced 
upon her letter. 

He kissed it; he read it a dozen times. 
He sat down where she had sat; and his 
baseless passion overpowered him. Her 
beauty, her agitation, her fear, her tears, 
all combined to madden him, and do the 
devil’s work in his false, selfish heart, 
so open to violent passions, so dead to 
conscience. | 

For once in his life he was violently 
agitated and torn by conflicting feelings. 
He walked about the room more wildly 
than his victim had; and if it be true, 
that, in certain great temptations, good 
and bad angels fight for a man, here you 
might have seen as fierce a battle of that 
kind as ever was. 

At last he rushed out into the air, and 
did not return till ten o’clock at night. 
He came back pale and haggard, and 
with a look of crime in his face. 

True Bohemian as he was, he sent for 
a pint of brandy. 


hanged, with these eyes. 


3v9 


So then the die was cast; and some- 
thing was to be done that needed brandy. 

He bolted himself in, and drank a 
wine-glass of it neat ; then another ; then 
another. 

Now his pale cheek is flushed, and his 
eye glitters. Drink forever! great ruin 
of English souls, as well as bodies. 

He put the poker in the fire and heated 
it red ‘hot. 

He brought Staines’s letter, and soft- 
ened the sealing-wax with the hot poker ; 
then, with his penknife, made a neat in- 
cision in the wax, and opened the letter. 
He took out the ring, and put it carefully 
away. Then he lighted a cigar, and read 
the letter, and studied it. Many a man, 
capable of murder in heat of passion, 
could not have resisted the pathos of this 
letter. Many a Newgate thief, after 
reading it, would have felt such pity for 
the loving husband who had suffered to 
the verge of death, and then to the brink 
of madness, and for the poor bereaved 
wife, that he would have taken the let- 
ter down to Gravesend that very night, 
though he picked two fresh pockets to 
defray the expenses of the road. 

But this was an egotist. Good-nature 
had curbed his egotism a little while ; 
but now vanity and passion had swept 
away all unselfish feelings, and the pure 
egotist alone remained. 

Now, the pure egotist has been defined 
as aman who will burn down his nezgh- 
bor’s house to cook himself an egg. 
Murder is but egotism carried out to 
its natural climax. What is murder 
to a pure egotist, especially a brandied 
one? 

I knew an egotist who met a female 
acquaintance in Newhaven village. She 
had a one-pound note, and offered . to 
treat him. She changed this note to 
treat him. Fish she gave him, and much 
whisky. Cost her four shillings. He 
ate and drank with her at her expense ; 
and, his principal blood-vessel being 
warmed with her whisky, he murdered 
her for the change — the odd sixteen 
shillings. 

I had the pleasure of seeing that egotist 
It was a slice 


380 WORKS 


of luck, that, I grieve to say, has not oc- meet him. 


curred again to me. 

So much for a whiskyed egotist. 

His less truculent, but equally remorse- 
less, brother in villainy, the brandied 
egotist, Falcon, could read that poor 
husband’s letter without blenching. The 
love and the anticipations of rapture— 
these made him writhe a little with jeal- 
ousy; but they roused not a grain of 
pity. He was a true egotist, blind, re- 
morseless. 

In this his true character he studied 
the letter profoundly, and mastered all 
the facts, and digested them well. 

All manner of diabolical artifices pre- 
sented themselves to his brain, barren of 
true intellect, yet fertile in fraud, but in 
that, and all low cunning and subtlety, 
far more than a match for Solomon or 
Bacon. 

His sinister studies were persisted in 
far into the night. Then he went to bed ; 
and his unbounded egotism gave him the 
sleep a grander criminal would have 
courted in vain on the verge of a mon- 
strous and deliberate crime. 

Next day he went to a fashionable 
tailor, and ordered a complete suit of 
black. This was made in forty-eight 
hours: the interval was spent mainly in 
concocting lies to be incorporated with 
the number of minute facts he had gath- 
ered from Staines’s letter, and in making 
close imitations of his handwriting. 

Thus armed, and crammed with more 
lies than the ‘‘ Menteur’”’ of Corneille, 
but not such innocent ones, he went down 
to Gravesend, all in deep mourning, with 
crape round his hat. 

He presented himself at the villa. 

The servant was all obsequiousness. 
Yes, Mrs. Staines received few visitors ; 
but she was at home to him. He even 
began to falter excuses. ‘‘ Nonsense,”’ 
said Falcon, and slipped a sovereign into 
his hand. ‘* You are a good servant, and 
obey orders.”’ 

The servant’s respect doubled; and he 
ushered the visitor into the drawing-room, 
as one whose name was a passport. ‘‘ Mr. 
Reginald Falcon, madam.”’ 

Mrs. Staines was alone. 


She rose to | 


OF CHARLES READE. 


Her color came and went. 
Her full eye fell on him, and took in all 
at a glance—that he was all in black, 
and that he had a beard, and looked 
pale and ill at.ease. 

Little dreaming that this was the anxi- 
ety of a felon about to take the actual 
plunge into a novel crime, she was rather 
prepossessed by it. The beard gave him 
dignity, and hid his cruel mouth. His 
black suit seemed to say he, too, had 
lost some one dear to him; and that 
was a ground of sympathy. 

She received him kindly, and thanked 
him for taking the trouble to come again. 
She begged him to be seated, and then, 
woman-like, she waited for him to ex- 
plain. 

But he was in no hurry, and waited 
for her. He knew she would speak if he 
was silent. ; 

She could not keep him waiting long. 
‘Mr. Falcon,”’ said she, hesitating a lit- 
tle, ‘‘you have something to say to me 
about him I have lost.’’ 

““ Yes,’’ said he softly. ‘‘I have some- 
thing I could say; and I think I ought 
to say it: but I am afraid; because I 
don’t know what will be the result. I 
fear to make you more unhappy.”’ 

‘‘“Me! more unhappy? Me, whose 
dear husband lies at the bottom of the 
ocean. Other poor wounded creatures 
have the wretched comfort of knowing 
where he lies, of carrying flowers to his 
tomb; but I— Oh, Mr. Falcon! Iam 
bereaved of all: even his poor remains 
lost, lost.’? She could say no more. 

Even that craven heart began to quake 


jat what he was doing—quaked, yet per- 


severed ; but his own voice quivered, and 
his cheek grew ashy pale. No wonder. 
If ever God condescended to pour his 
lightning on a skunk, surely now was 
the time. 

Shaking and sweating with terror at 
his own act, he stammered out, ‘* Would 
it be the least comfort to you to know 
that you are not denied that poor con- 
solation? Suppose he died not so mis- 
erable as you think? Suppose he was 
picked up at sea, in a dying state? ’’ 

BA hae 


A SIMPLETON. 


“Suppose he lingered, nursed by kind 
and sympathizing hands, that almost 
saved him? Suppose he was laid in 
hallowed ground, and a great many 
tears shed over his grave ?’’ 

‘¢ Ah, that would indeed be a comfort! 
And it was tosay this you came. I thank 
you! I bless you! 
friend, you are deceived. You don’t know 
my husband. You never saw him. He 
perished at sea.”’ 

“Will it be kind, or unkind, to tell you 
why I think he died as I tell you, and not 
at sea ?”’ 

‘Kind, but impossible. You deceive 
yourself. Ah! {f see. You found some 
poor sufferer, and were good to him; 
but it was not my poor Christie. Oh, 
if it were, I should worship you! But 
I thank you as it is. It was very kind 
to want to give me this little, little 
crumb of comfort; for I know I did 
not behave well to you, sir: but you 
are generous, and have forgiven a poor 
heart-broken creature that never was 
very wise.”’ 

He gave her time to cry, and then said 
to her, ‘‘1 only wanted to be sure it 
would be any comfort to you. Mrs. 
Staines, it is true I did not even know 
his name, nor yours. When I met, in 
this very room, the great disappoint- 
ment that has saddened my own life, I 
left England directly. I collected funds, 
went to Natal, and turned landowner and 
farmer. I have made a large fortune; 
but I need not tell you I am not happy. 
Well, I had a yacht, and, sailing from 
Cape Town to Algoa Bay, I picked up a 
raft with a dying man on it. He was 
perishing of exhaustion and exposure. 
I got a little brandy between his lips, 
and kept him alive. I landed with him 
at once: and we nursed him on shore. 
We had to be very cautious. He im- 
proved. We got him to take egg-flip. 
He smiled on us at first, and then he 
thanked us. I nursed him day and night 
for ten days. He got much stronger. 
He spoke to me, thanked me again and 
again, and told me his name was Christo- 
pher Staines. He toid me he should never 
get well. Il implored him to have courage. 


But, my good, kind | 


381 


He said he did not want for courage ; but 
nature had been tried too hard. We got 
so fond of each other. Oh!’’—and the 
caitiff pretended to break down; and his 
feigned grief mingled with Rosa’s despair- 
ing sobs. 

He made an apparent effort, and said, 
‘‘ He spoke to me of his wife, his darling 
Rosa. The name made me start; but I 
could not know it was you. At last he 
was strong enough to write a few lines ; 
and he made me promise to take them to 
his wife.” 

‘«* Ah?” said Rosa. “‘ Show them me.’’ 

sobowilly 

“This moment!’? And her hands be- 
gan to work convulsively. 

‘‘1 cannot,’’ said Falcon. 
brought them with me.”’ 

Rosa cast a keen eye of suspicion and 
terror on him. His not bringing the let- 
ter seemed monstrous ; and so, indeed, it 
was. ‘The fact is, the letter was not writ- 
ten. 

Falcon affected not to notice her keen 
look. He flowed on, ‘‘ The address he 
put on that letter astonished me. ‘ Kent 
Villa.’ Of course I knew Kent Villa: and 
he called you ‘ Rosa.’ ”’ 

“How could you come to me without 
that letter ?’’ cried Rosa, wringing her 
hands. ‘“‘HowamI to know? It is all 
so strange, so incredible ! ”’ 

‘Don’t you believe me?” said Falcon 
sadly. ‘‘Why should I deceive you? 
The first time I came down to tell you 
all this, I did not know who Mrs. Staines 
was. I suspected, but no more. The 
second time, I saw you in the church; 
and then I knew, and followed you, to 
try and tell you all this; and you were 
not at home to me.”’ 

‘‘Forgive me,’’ said Rosa carelessly : 
then, earnestly, ‘‘ The letter—when can 
I see it ?’’ 

‘‘T will send or bring it.”’ 

“Bring it! Iam in agony till I see it. 
Oh, my darling! my darling! It can’t 
be true. It was not my Christie. He 
lies in the depths of ocean. Lord Tad- 
caster was in the ship, and he says so: 
everybody says so.”’ 

“And I say he sleeps in hallowed 


‘<1 have not 


382 WORKS 
ground; and these hands laid him 
there.” 

Rosa lifted her hands to heaven, and 
cried piteously, ‘‘1 don’t know what to 
think. You would not willingly deceive 
me. But how can this be? Oh, Uncle 
Philip! why are you away from me? 
Sir, you say he gave you a letter.” 

at Megat 

‘¢Oh! why, why did you not bring it?’’ 

** Because he told me the contents ; 
and I thought he prized my poor efforts 
too highly. It did not occur to me you 
would doubt my word.”’ 

‘“*QOh, no! no more I do. 
was not my Christie.’’ 

“Tl go for the letter at once, Mrs. 
Staines. ”’ 

‘““Oh, thank you! 
this minute ¥7? > 

The artful rogue did not go; never in- 
tended. 

He rose to go, but had a sudden inspira- 
tion ; very sudden, of course. ‘‘ Had he 
nothing about him you could recognize 
him by ?”’ 

“Yes, he had a ring I gave him.”’ 

Falcon took a black-edged envelope out 
of his pocket. 

‘* A ruby ring,’’ said she, beginning to 
tremble at his quiet action. 

“Isthat it?’? and he handed her a 
ruby ring. 


But I fear it 


Bless you! Yes, 


? 


CHAPTER XXI. 


Mrs. STAINES uttered a sharp cry, and 
seized the ring. Her eyes dilated over it, 
and she began to tremble in every limb ; 
and at last she sank slowly back, and her 
head fell on one side like a broken lily. 
The sudden sight of the ring overpow- 
ered her almost to fainting. 

Falcon rose to call for assistance ; but 
she made him a feeble motion not to 
do so. 

She got the better of her faintness; 


OF CHARLES READE. 


and then she fell to kissing the ring’ in 
an agony of love, and wept over it, and 
still held it, and gazed at it through her 
blinding tears. 

Halcon eyed her uneasily. 

Bat he soon found he had nothing 
to fear. For a long time she seemed 
scarcely aware of his presence; and, 
when she noticed him, it was to thank 
him almost passionately. 

‘It was my Christie you were so good 
to. May Heaven bless you forit! And 
you will bring me his letter; will you 
not? ’”’ 

“Of course I will.” 

‘“‘Oh! do not go yet. It is all so 
strange, so sad! I seem to have lost 
my poor Christie again, since he did not 
die at sea. But'no: lam ungrateful to 
God, and ungrateful to the kind friend 
that nursed him to the last. Ah, Ienvy 
you that! Tell meall. Never mind my 
crying. Ihave seen the time I could not 
cry. It was worse then than now. I 
shall always cry when I speak of him; 
ay, to my dying day. ‘Tell me, tell me 
callers 

Her passion frightened the egotist, but 
did not turn him. He had gone too far. 
He told her, that, after raising all their 
hopes, Dr. Staines had suddenly changed 
for the worst, and sunk rapidly; that his 
last words had been about her; and he 
had said, ‘‘ My poor Rosa: who will pro- 
tect her?” That, to comfort him, he 
had said he would protect her. Then the 
dying man had managed to write a line 
or two, and to address it. Almost his 
last words had been, ‘‘ Be a father to my 
child.”’ 

‘That is strange.”’ 

“You have no child? Then it must 
have been you he meant. He spoke of 
you as a child more than once.”’ 

‘Mr. Falcon, I have a child, but born 
since I lost my poor child’s father.”’ 

‘*Then I think he knew it. They say 
that dying men can see all \over the 
world; and I remember, when he said 
it, his eyes seemed fixed very strangely, 
as if on something distant. Oh, how 
strange this allis! May TI see his child, 


to whom I promised—’’ 


A SIMPLETON. 


The artist in lies left his sentence half 
completed. 

Rosa rang, and sent for her little boy. 

Mr. Falcon admired his beauty, and 
said quietly, ‘‘I shall keep my vow.’’ 

He then left her with a promise to 


come back early next morning with the 


letter. 

She let him go only on those condi- 
tions. 

As soon as her father came in, she ran 
to him with this strange story. 

““T don’t believe it,’’ said he. 
impossible.’’ 

She showed him the proof—the ruby 
ring. ; 

Then he became very uneasy, and 
begged her not to tell a soul. He did 
not tell her’ the reason; but he feared 
the insurance office would hear of it, and 
require proofs of Christopher’s decease ; 
whereas they had accepted it without a 
murmur, on the evidence of Captain 
Hamilton and the Amphitrite’s log- 
book. 

As for Falcon, he went carefully 
through Staines’s two letters; and, 
wherever he found a word that suited 
his purpose, he traced it by the usual 
process; and so, in the course of a few 
hours, he concocted a short letter, all the 
words in which, except three, were fac- 
similes, only here and there a little 
shaky. The three odd words he had to 
imitate by observation of the letters. 
The signature he got to perfection by 
tracing. 

He inserted this letter in the original 
envelope, and sealed it very carefully, so 
as to hide that the seal had been tampered 
with. 

Thus armed, he went down to Graves- 
end. ‘There he hired a horse and rode to 
Kent Villa. — 

Why he hired a horse, he knew how 
hard itis to forge handwriting; and he 
chose to have the means of escape at 
hand. 

He came into the. drawing-room, 
ghastly pale, and almost immediately 
gave her the letter; then turned his 
back, feigning delicacy. In reality, he 
was quaking with fear, lest she should 


16 is 


383 


suspect the handwriting. But the enve- 
lope was addressed by Staines, and paved 
the way for the letter. She was unsus- 
picious and good; and her heart cried 
out for her husband’s last written words. 
At such a moment what chance had judg- 
ment and suspicion in an innocent and 
loving soul ? 

Her eloquent sighs and sobs soon told 
the craven he had nothing to fear. 

The letter ran thus: 


“My own Rosa— 

‘‘All that a brother could do for a 
beloved brother Falcon has done. He 
nursed me night and day. But it is 
vain. Ishall never see you again in this 
world. I send you a protector, and a 
father to your child. Value him. He 
has promised to be your stay on earth ; 
and my spirit shall watch over you. 

“To my last breath, 
‘* Your loving husband, 
‘‘ CHRISTOPHER STAINES.”’ 


Falcon rose, and began to steal on tip- 
toe out of the room. 

Rosa stopped him. ‘“ You. need not 
go,’’ said she. ‘‘ You are our friend. By 
and by I hope I shall find words to thank 
you.”’ 

‘‘Pray let me retire a moment,’ said 
the hypocrite. ‘‘ A husband’s last words; 
too sacred—a stranger.’? And he went 
out into the garden. There he found the 
nursemaid Emily, and the little boy. 

He stopped the child, and made love to 
the nursemaid ; showed her his diamonds 
(he carried them all about him) ; told her 
he had thirty thousand acres in Cape 
Colony, and diamonds on them; and was 
going to buy thirty thousand more of the 
government. ‘‘ Here, take one,’’ said he. 
“Oh! you needn’t be shy. They are 
common enough on my estates. I’ll tell 
you what, though, you could not buy that 
for less than thirty’ pounds at any shop 
in London. Could she, my little duck ? 
Never mind, it is no brighter than her 
eyes. Now, do you know what she will 
do with that, Master Christie? She will 
give it to some duffer to putin a pin.” 

‘‘She won’t do nothing of the kind,” 


384 


said Emily, flushing all over. ‘‘She is 
not such a fool.’? She then volunteered 
to tell him she had no sweetheart, and 
did not trouble her head about young 
men at all. He interpreted this to mean 
she was looking out for one. So do I. 

‘““No sweetheart !’’ said he; ‘‘and the 
prettiest girl I have seen since I landed. 
Then I put in for the situation.”’ 

Here, seeing the footman coming, he 
bestowed a most paternal kiss on little 
Christie, and saying, ‘‘ Not a word to 
John, or no more diamonds from me,’’ he 
moved carefully away, leaving the girl all 
in a flutter with extravagant hopes. 

The next moment this wolf in the sheep- 
fold entered the drawing-room. Mrs. 
Staines was not there. He waited and 
waited, and began to get rather uneasy, 
as men will who walk among pitfalls. 

Presently the footman came to say 
that Mrs. Staines was with her father, 
in his study; but she would come to him 
in five minutes. 

This increased his anxiety. What! 
She was taking: advice of an older head. 
He began to be very seriously alarmed, 
and indeed had pretty well made up his 
mind to go down and gallop off, when the 
door opened, and Rosa came hastily in. 
Her eyes were very red with weeping. 
She came to him with both hands ex- 
tended to him. He gave her his timidly. 
She pressed them with such earnestness 
and power as he could not have sus- 
pected ; and thanked him and blessed him 
with such a torrent of eloquence, that 
he hung his head with shame. And be- 
ing unable to face it out, villain as he 
was, yet still artful to the core, he pre- 
tended to burst out crying, and ran out 
of the room, and rode away. 

He waited two days, and then called 
again. Rosa reproached him sweetly for 
going before she had half thanked him. 

<All the better,’’ said he. ‘‘I have 
been thanked a great deal too much al- 
ready. Who would not do his best for a 
dying countryman, and fight night and 
day to save him for his wife and child at 
home? If I had succeeded, then I would 
be greedy of praise: but now it makes me 
blush ; it makes me very sad.”’ 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


““You did your best,’’ said Rosa tear- 
fully. 

“* Ah! that I did. 
weeks after myself, through the strain 


upon my mind, and the disappointment, — 


Indeed I was ill for | 


and going so many nights without sleep. | 


But don’t let us talk of that.’ 

*“Do you know what my darling says 
to me in my letter ? ’’ 

ON 

‘Would you like to see it?” 

“Indeed I should; bub 1 Have sno 
right.”’ 

“Every right. 
esteem, 
you.”’ 

She handed him the letter, and buried 
her own face in her hands. 

He read it, and acted the deepest emo- 
tion. 

He handed it back without a word. 


It is the only mark of 
worth anything, I can show 


CHAPTER Aina 


From this time Falcon was always 
welcome at Kent Villa. He fascinated 
everybody in the house. He renewed his 


acquaintance with Mr. Lusignan, and got 


asked to stay a week in the house. He 
showed Rosa and her father the dia- 
monds; and, the truth must be owned, 
they made Rosa’s eyes sparkle for the 
first time this eighteen months. He in- 
sinuated, rather than declared, his enor- 
mous wealth. 

In reply to the old man’s eager ques- 
tions, as the large diamonds lay glitter- 
ing on the table, and pointed every word, 
he said that a few of his Hottentots had 
found these for him. He had made them 
dig on a diamondiferous part of his estate. 
just by way of testing the matter; and 
this was the result—this, and a much 
larger stone, for which he had received 
eight thousand pounds from Posno., 

‘Tf IT was a young man,”’’ said Lusig- 


a 


A SIMPLETON. 


nan, ‘‘I would go out directly and dig on 
your estate.”’ 

“7 would not let you do anything so 
paltry,’’ said ‘‘ le menteur.’’ 

“Why, my dear sir, there are no fort- 
unes to be made by grubbing for dia- 
monds. The fortunes are made out of 
the diamonds, but not in that way. Now, 
I have thirty thousand acres, and am just 
concluding a bargain for thirty thousand 
more, on which I happen to know there 
are diamonds in a sly corner. Well, on 
my thirty thousand tried acres, a hun- 
dred only are diamondiferous. But I 
have four thousand thirty-foot claims, 
leased at ten shillings per month. Count 
that up.”’ 

“Why, it is twenty-four thousand 
pounds a year.”’ 

‘« Hixcuse me: you must deduct a thou- 
sand a year for the expenses of collection. 
But that is only one phase of the business. 
I have a large inn upon each of the three 
great routes from the diamonds to the 
coast ; and these inns are supplied with 
the produce of my own farms. Mark the 
effect of the diamonds on property. My 
sixty thousand acres which are not dia- 
mondiferous will very soon be worth as 
much as sixty thousand English acres, 
say two pounds the acre, per annum. 
That is under the mark: because, in 
Africa, the land is not burdened with 
poor-rates, tithes, and all the other in- 
iquities that crush the English land- 
owner, as I know to my cost. But that 
is not all, sir. Would you believe it? 
Even after the diamonds were declared, 
the people out there had so little fore- 
sight that they allowed me to buy land 
all round. Port Elizabeth, Natal, and 
Cape Town, the three ports through 
which the world gets at the diamonds, and 
the diamonds get at the world—I have 
got a girdle of land round those three 
outlets, bought by the acre: in two years 
I shall sell it by the yard. Believe me, 
sir, English fortunes, even the largest, 
are mere child’s play, compared with the 
colossal wealth a man can accumulate, if 
he looks beyond these great discoveries to 
their consequences, and lets others grub 
for him. But what is the use of it all to 


389 


me?’’ said this Bohemian with a sigh. 
‘‘] have no taste for luxuries, no love of 
display. lhave not even charity to dis- 
pense on a large scale; for there are no 
deserving poor out there. And the pov- 
erty that springs from vice—that I never 
will encourage.’’ 

John heard nearly all this, and took it 
into the kitchen; and henceforth Adora- 
tion was the only word for this prince of 
men, this rare combination of the Adonis 
and the millionaire. 

He seldom held such discourses before 
Rosa, but talked her father into an im- 
pression of his boundless wealth, and half 
reconciled him to Rosa’s refusal of Lord 
Tadcaster ; since here was an old suitor, 
who, doubtless, with a little encourage- 
ment, wonld soon come on again. 

Under this impression, Mr. Lusignan 
gave Falcon more than a little encourage- 
ment; and, as Rosa did not resist, he be- 
came a constant visitor at the villa, and 
was always there from Saturday to Mon- 
day. 

He exerted all his art of pleasing ; and 
he succeeded. He was welcome to Rosa, 
and she made no secret of it. 

Emily threw herself in his way, and had 
many a sly talk with him while he was 
pretending to be engaged with young 
Christie. He flattered her, and made 
her sweet on him, but was too much in 
love with Rosa, after his fashion, to flirt 
seriously with her. He thought he might 
want her services: so he worked upon 
her after this fashion—asked her if she 
would like to keep an inn. 

‘““Wouldn’t I just? ’’ said she frankly. 

Then he told her, that, if all went to his 
wish in England, she should be landlady 
of one of his inns in the Cape Colony. 
‘And you will get a good husband out 
there directly,’ said he. ‘“ Beauty is a 
very uncommon thing in those parts. 
But I shall ask you to marry somebody 
who can help you in the business, or not 
to marry at all.”’ 

‘“‘T wish I had the inn!’ said Emily. 
‘‘Husbands are soon got when a girl 
hasn’t her face only to look to.’’ 

‘Well, I promise you the inn,”’ said he, 
‘and a good outfit of clothes, and money 

a 1 3 READE—VOL. VIII. 


386 WORKS 


in both pockets, if you will do me a good 
turn here in England.”’ 

‘‘That I would, sir. But laws, what 
can a poor girl like me do for a rich gen- 
tleman like you? ”’ 

‘Can you keep a secret, Emily ? ’’ 

‘““Nobody better. You try me, sir.” 

He looked at her well; saw she was 
one of those who could keep a secret if 
she chose; and he resolved to risk it. 

‘‘HKmily, my girl,’’ said he sadly, “I 
am an unhappy man.”’ 

‘You, sir! Why you didn’t ought 
to be.”’ 

«‘T am, then. 
win her.”’ 

Then he told the girl a pretty tender 
tale, that he had loved Mrs. Staines when 
she was Miss Lusignan; had thought 
himself beloved in turn, but was rejected. 
And now, though she was a widow, he 
had not the courage to court her: her 
heart was in the grave. He spoke in 
such a broken voice that the girl’s 
good nature fought against her little 
pique at finding how little he was smitten 
with her ; and Falcon soon found means 
to array her cupidity on the side of her 
good nature. He gave her a five-pound 
note to buy gloves, and promised her a 
fortune; and she undertook to be secret 
as the grave, and say certain things 
adroitly to Mrs. Staines. 

Accordingly, this young woman omitted 
no opportunity of dropping a word in 
favor of Falcon. For one thing, she said 
to Mrs. Staines, “Mr. Falcon must be 
very fond of children, ma’am. Why, he 
worships Master Christie.”’ 

‘‘Indeed! Ihave not observed that.’’ 

“Why, no, ma’am. He is rather shy 
over it; but, when he sees us alone, he is 
sure to come to us, and say, ‘ Let me look 
at my child, nurse:’ and he do seem fit 
to eat him. Onst he says to me, ‘ This 
boy is my heir, nurse.” What did he 
mean by that, ma’am?”’ 

“‘T don’t. know.”’ 

‘Is he any kin to you, ma’am ?”’ 

‘“‘“None whatever. You must have 
misunderstood him. You should not re- 
peat all that people say.”’ 

“No, ma’am: only I did think it so 


I am in love, and cannot 


OF CHARLES READE. 


odd. Poor gentleman! I don’t think 
he is happy, for all his money.’’ 

‘‘ He is too good to be unhappy all his 
life.?” 

‘¢So I think, ma’am.”’ 

These conversations were always short ; 
for Rosa, though she was too kind and 
gentle to snub the girl, was also too 
delicate to give the least encouragement 
to her gossip. 

But Rosa’s was a mind that could be 
worked upon; and these short but re- 
peated eulogies were not altogether with- 
out effect. 

At last, the insidious Falcon, by not 
making his approaches in a way to alarm 
her, acquired her friendship as well as 
her gratitude; and, in short, she got 
used to him, and liked him. Not being 
bound by any limit of fact whatever, he 
entertained her, and took her out of her- 
self a little by extemporaneous pictures. 
He told her all his thrilling adventures 
by flood and field, not one of which had 
ever occurred; yet he made them all 
sound like truth. He invented strange 
characters, and set them talking. He 
went after great whales, and harpooned 
one, which slapped his boat into frag- 
ments with one stroke of its tail, then 
died: and he hung on by the harpoon 
portruding from the carcass until a ship 
came and picked him up. He shot a 
lion that was carrying off his favorite 
Hottentot. He encountered another; 
wounded him with both barrels; was 
seized, and dragged along the ground, 
and gave himself up for lost; but kept 
firing his revolver down the monster’s 
throat, till at last he sickened that one, 
and so escaped out of death’s maw. He 
did not say how he had fired in the air, 
and ridden fourteen miles on end at the 
bare sight of a lion’s cub; but to com- 
pensate that one reserve, plunged into 
a raging torrent, and saved a drowning 
woman by her long hair, which he 
caught in his teeth. He rode a race 
on an ostrich against a friend on a 
zebra, which went faster, but threw his 
rider, and screamed with rage at not 
being able to eat him; he, Falcon, hav- 
ing declined to run unless his friend’s 


A SIMPLETON. 


zebra was muzzled. He fed the hungry, 
clothed the naked, and shot a wild ele- 
phant in the eye; and all this he en- 
livened with pictorial descriptions of no 
mean beauty, and as like South Africa 
as if it had been feu George Robins 
advertising the Continent for sale. 

In short, never was there a more 
voluble and interesting har by word of 
mouth; and never was there a more 
agreeable creature interposed between a 
bereaved widow and her daily grief and 
regrets. He took her a little out of her- 
self, and did her good. 

At last, such was the charm of infinite 
lying, she missed him on the days he did 
not come, and was brighter when he did 
come and lhe. 

Things went smoothly, and so pleas- 
antly, that he would gladly have pro- 
longed this form of courtship for a month 
or two longer sooner than risk a prema- 
ture declaration. But more than one 
cause drove him to a bolder course—his 
passion, which increased in violence by 
contact with its beautiful object, and also 
a great uneasiness he felt at not hearing 
from Phoebe. This silence was ominous. 
He and she knew each other, and what 
the other was capable of. He knew she 
was the woman to cross the seas after 
him, if Staines left the diggings, and any 
explanation took place that might point 
to his whereabouts. 

These double causes precipitated mat- 
ters; and at last he began to throw more 
devotion into his manner. And, having 
so prepared her for a few days, he took 
his opportunity, and said one day, ‘“‘ We 
are both unhappy. Give me the right to 
console you.”’ 

She colored high, and said, ‘‘ You have 
consoled me more than all the world. 
But there is a limit; always will be.”’ 

One less adroit would have brought her 
to the point; but this artist only sighed, 
and let the arrow rankle. By this means 
he outfenced her; for now she had list- 
ened to a declaration, and not stopped it 
short. | 

He played melancholy for a day or 
two; and then he tried her another way. 
He said, ‘“‘1 promised your dying hus- 


387 


band to be your protector, and a father 
to his child. I see but one way to keep 
my word; and that gives me courage to 
speak: without that, I never could. 
Rosa, I loved you years ago: I am 
unmarried for your sake. Let me be 
your husband, and a father to your 
childs 

Rosa shook her head. ‘‘I could not 
marry again. I esteem you; I am very 
grateful to you; and I know I behaved 
ill to-you before. If I could marry again, 
it would be you. But I cannot. Oh, 
never, never! ”’ 

‘‘Then we are both to be unhappy all 
our days.”’ 

‘‘] shall, as I ought to be. You will 
not, Ihope. Ishall miss you sadly ; but, 
for all that, I advise you to leave me. 
You will carry my everlasting gratitude, 
go where you will: that and my esteem 
are all I have to give.”’ 

‘‘T will go,”’ said he; ‘‘and I hope he 
who is gone will forgive my want of 
courage.”’ 

‘‘He who is gone took my promise 
never to marry again.”’ 

‘Dying men see clearer. JI am sure he 
wished—no matter. It is too delicate.’’ 
He kissed her hand and went out, a pict- 
ure of dejection. 

Mrs. Staines shed a tear for him. 

Nothing was heard of him for several 
days; and Rosa pitied him more and 
more, and felt a certain discontent with 
herself, and doubt whether she had done 
right. 

Matters were in this state, when, one 
morning, Emily came screaming in from 
the garden, “‘ The child! Master Christie! 
Where is he? Where is he ?”’ 

The house was alarmed. The garden 
searched, the adjoining paddock. The 
child was gone. 

Emily was examined, and owned, with 
many sobs and hysterical cries, that she 
had put him down in the summer-house 
for a minute, while she went to ask the 
gardener for some balm, balm-tea being 
a favorite drink of hers. “ But there was 
nobody near, that I saw,’’ she sobbed. 

Further inquiry proved, however, that 
a tall gypsy woman had been seen prowl- 


388 


ing about that morning; and suspicion 
instantly fastened on her. Servants were 
sent out right and left, but nothing dis- 
covered ; and the agonized mother, ter- 
rified out of her wits, had Falcon tele- 
graphed to immediately. 

He came galloping down that very 
evening, and heard the story. He gal- 
loped into Gravesend, and, after seeing 
the police, sent word out he should ad- 
vertise. He placarded Gravesend with 
rewards, and a reward of a thousand 
pounds ; the child to be brought to him, 
and no questions asked. 

Meantime, the police and many of the 
neighboring gentry came about the mis- 
erable mother with their vague ideas. 

Down comes Falcon again next day ; 
tells what he has done, and treats them 
all with contempt. ‘‘ Don’t you be afraid, 
Mrs. Staines,’’ said he. ‘‘ You will get 
him back. I have taken the sure way. 
This sort of rogues dare not go near the 
police; and the police can’t find them. 
You have no enemies: it is only some 
woman that has fancied a beautiful child. 
Well, she can have them by the score for 
a thousand pounds.”’ 

He was the only one with a real idea; 
the woman saw it, and clung to him. He 
left late at night. 

Next morning, out came the advertise- 
ments; and he sent her a handful by 
special messenger. His zeal and activ- 
ity kept her bereaved heart from utter 
despair. 

At eleven that night came a tele- 
graph: 

‘““T have got him. 
special train.’’ 


Coming down by 


Then what a burst of joy and grati- 
tude! The very walls of the house 
seemed to ring with it as a harp rings 
with music. A special train too! He 
would not let the mother yearn all 
night. 

At one in the morning, he drove up 
with the child and a hired nurse, 

Imagine the scene !— the mother’s 
screams of joy, her furious kisses, her 
cooing, her tears, and all the miracles of 
nature at sucha time. The servants all 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


mingled with their employers in the gen- 
eral rapture; and Kmily, who was pale 
as death, cried and sobbed, and said, ‘* Oh, 
ma’am ! [’ll never let him out of mysight 
again, no, not for one minute.’ Falcon 
made her a signal and went out. She 
met him in the garden. 

She was much agitated, and cried, 
‘*Oh, you did well to bring him to-day. 
I could not have kept it another hour. 
I’m a wretch !’’ 

‘You are a good kind girl; and here’s 
the fifty pounds I promised you.’’ 

“ Well, and I have earned it.’’ 

“Of course you have. Meet me in the 
garden to-morrow morning, and I’ll show 
you you have done a kind thing to your 
mistress, aS wellas me. And, as for the 
fifty pounds, that is nothing ; do you 
hear? It is nothing at all, compared 
with what I will do for you, if you will be 
true to me, and hold your tongue.”’ 

“Oh! as for that, my tongue shan’t 
betray you, nor shame me. You are a 
gentleman, and Ido think you love her, 
or I would not help you.” 

So she salved her nursemaid’s con- 
science with the help of the fifty pounds. 

The mother was left to her rapture that 
night. In the morning Falcon told his 
tale. At two P.M., a man had called on 
him, and had produced one of his adver- 
tisements, and had asked him if that was 
all square—no bobbies on the lurk. ‘* All 
square, my fine fellow,’ said I.—‘ Weill,’ 
said he, ‘ ] suppose you area gentleman. ’— 
‘Lam of that opinion too,’ said I.—‘ Well, 
sir,’ says he, ‘I know a party as has 
found a young gent as comes werry nigh 
your advertisement.’—‘ It will be a very 
lucky find to that party,’ I said, ‘if he is 
on the square.’—‘ Oh! we are always on 
the square, when the blunt is put down.’— 
‘The blunt for the child, when you like, 
and where you like,’ said I.—‘ You are the 
right sort,’ said he.—‘ I am,’ replied I.— 
‘Will you come and see if it is all right ?’ 
said he.—‘Ina minute,’ said I. Stepped 
into my bedroom, and loaded me my Ssix- 
shooter.”’ 

‘What is that? ’’ said Lusignan. 

‘* A revolver with six barrels: by the 
by, the very same I killed the lion with. 


A SIMPLETON. 


Ugh ! I never think of that scene without 
feeling a little quiver; and my nerves 
are pretty good too. Well, he took me 
into an awful part of the town, down a 
filthy close, into some boozing Ae beg 
pardon, some thieves’ public-house.’ 

“Oh, my dear friend!’ said 
‘were you not frightened ? ”’ 

‘* Shall I tell you the truth, or play the 
hero? I think I'll tell you the truth. I 
felt a little frightened, lest they should 
get my money and my life without my 
getting my godson: that is what I call 
himnow. Well, two ugly dogs came in, 
and said, ‘Let us see the flimsies before 
you see the kid.’ 

‘“<«That is rather sharp practice, I 
think,’ said I; ‘however, here’s the swag, 
and here’s the watch-dog.’ So 1 put 
down the notes, and my hand over them, 
with my revolver cocked, and ready to 
fire;*7 

«Yes, yes,’ said Rosa pantingly. 
‘* Ah, you were a match for them ! ”’ 

‘‘Well, Mrs. Staines, if l was writing 
you a novel, | suppose I should tell you 
the rogues recoiled; but the truth is 
they only laughed, and were quite 
pleased. ‘Swell’s in earnest,’ said one. 
‘Jem, show the kid.’ Jem _ whistled ; 
and in came a great, tall, black gypsy 
woman, with the darling. My heart was 
in my mouth; but I would not let them 
see it. Isaid, ‘Itis all right. Take half 
the notes here, and half at the door.’ 
They agreed, and then I did it quick— 
walked to the door; took the child; gave 
them the odd notes; and made off as fast 
as | could ; hired a nurse at the hospital ; 
and the rest you know.’’ 

““Papa,’’ said Rosa with enthusiasm, 
‘there is but one manin England who 
would aS got me back my aps and 
this is he.’ 

When they were alone, Falcon told her 
she had said words that had gladdened 
his very heart. ‘‘ You admit I can carry 
out one-half of his wishes ?’’ said he. 

Mrs. Staines said ‘‘ Yes; ’’ then colored 
high; then, to turn it off, said, ‘‘ But I 
cannot allow you to lose that large 
sum of money. You must let me repay 
you.”’ 


Rosa, 


389 


‘Large sum of money!’’ said he. ‘It 
is no more to me than sixpence to most 
people. I don’t know what to do with 
my money; and I never shall know, 
unless you will make a sacrifice of your 
own feelings to the wishes of the dead. 
Oh, Mrs. Staines, Rosa! do pray consider 
that a man of that wisdom sees the 
future, and gives wise advice. Sure am 
I, that if you could overcome your nat- 
ural repugnance to a second marriage, 
it would be the best thing for your little 
boy (lL love him already as if he were my 
own), and in time would bring you peace 
and comfort, and some day, years hence, 
even happiness. You are my only love; 
yet I should never have come to you 
again if he had not sent me. Do con- 
sider how strange it all is, and what it 
points to, and don’t let me have the 
misery of losing you again, when you can 
do no better now, alas! than reward my 
fidelity.”’ 

She was much moved at this artful 
appeal, and said, “If I was sure Il was 
obeying his will. But how can I feel 
that, when we both promised never to 
wed again ?”’ 

“A man’s dying words are more sa- 
cred than any other. You have his let- 
tery 

(73 eey e 
again.’ 

‘¢That is what he meant, though.”’ 

‘“‘“How can you say that? How can 
you know?”’’ 

‘‘ Because I put the words he said to 
me together with that short line to you. 
Mind, I don’t say that he did not exag- 
gerate my poor merits: on the contrary, 
I think he did; but I declare to you that 
he did hope I should take charge of you 
and your child. Right or wrong, it was 
his wish: so pray do not deceive yourself 
on that point.’’ 

This made more impression on her than 
anything else he could say; and she 
said, “‘ I promise you one thing—I will 
never marry any man but you.”’ 

Instead of pressing her further, as an 
inferior artist would, he broke into rapt- 
ures, kissed her hand tenderly, and was 


but he does not say, ‘marry 


| in such high spirits, and so voluble all 


390 


day, that she smiled sweetly on him, 
and thought to herself, ‘‘ Poor soul! 
how happy I could make him witha 
word ! ”’ 

As he was always watching her face— 
a practice he carried further than any 
male person Jiving—he divined that sen- 
timent, and wrought upon it so, that at 
last he tormented her into saying she 
would marry him some day. z 

When he had brought her to that, he 
raged inwardly to think he had not two 
years to work in; for it was evident she 
would marry him in time: but no, it had 
taken him more than four months, close 
siege, to bring her to that. No word 
from Phoebe. An ominous dread hung 
over his own soul. His wife would be 
upon him, or, worse still, her brother 
Dick, who, he knew, would beat him to a 
mummy on the spot, or, worst of all, the 
husband of Rosa Staines, who would kill 
him, or fling him into a prison. He must 
make a push. 

In this emergency he used his ally, Mr. 
Lusignan. He told him Mrs. Staines had 
promised to marry him, but at some dis- 
tant date. This would not do: he must 
look after his enormous interests in the 
colony, and he was so much in love, he 
could not leave her. 

The old gentleman was desperately 
fond of Falcon, and bent on the match; 
and he actually consented to give his 
daughter what Falcon called a little 
push. 

The little push was a very great one, I 
think. 

It consisted in directing the clergy- 
man to call in church the banns of mar- 
riage between Reginald Falcon and Rosa 
Staines. 

They were both in church together 
when this was done. Rosa all. but 
screamed, and then turned red as fire, 
and white as a ghost, by turns. She 
never stood up again all the service; 
and, in going home, refused Falcon’s 
arm, and walked swiftly home by her- 
self. Not that she had the slightest in- 
tention of passing this monstrous thing 
by in silence. On the contrary, her 
wrath was boiling over, and so hot, 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


that she knew she should make a scene 
in the street if she said a word there. 

Once inside the house she turned on 
Falcon, with a white cheek and a flash- 
ing eye, and said, ‘‘ Follow me, sir, if you 
please.’? She led the way to her father’s 
study. ‘“ Papa,’’ said she, “I throw my- 
self on your protection. Mr. Falcon has 
affronted me.”’ 

‘Oh, Rosa!’ cried Falcon, affecting 
utter dismay. 

‘‘Publicly, publicly. He has had the 
banns of marriage cried in the church 
without my permission.”’ 

**Don’t raise vour voice so loud, child. 
All the house will hear you.”’ 

**T choose all the house to hear me. I 
will not endure it. I will never marry 
you now—never !”’ 

** Rosa, my child,’’ said Lusignan, ‘ you 
need not scold poor Falcon; for 1am the 
culprit. It was I who ordered the banns 
to be cried.”’ 

“*Oh, papa ! you had no right to do such 
a thing as that.”’ 

““Tthink I had. I exercised parental 
authority for once, and for your good and 
for the good of a true and faithful lover of 
yours, whom you jilted once, and now 
you trifle with his affection and his inter- 
ests. He loves you too well to leave you; 
yet you know his vast estates and inter- 
ests require his supervision.”’ 

‘‘That for his vast estates! ’’ said Rosa 
contemptuously. ‘‘ Iam not to be driven 
to the altar like this, when my heart is in 
the grave. Don’t you do it again, papa, 
or I’ll get up and forbid the banns; af- 
front for affront.”’ 

‘‘] should like to see that,’’ said the old 
gentleman dryly. 

Rosa vouchsafed no reply, but swept 
out of the room with burning cheeks and 
glittering eyes, and was not Seen all day ; 
would not dine with them, in spite of 
three humble, deprecating notes Falcon 
sent her. 

‘‘Let the spiteful cat alone,” said old 
Lusignan. ‘* You and I will dine together 
in peace and quiet.”’ 

It was a dull dinner; but Falcon took 
advantage of the opportunity, impreg- 
nated the father with his views, and got 


: 


A SIMPLETON. 


him to promise to have the banns cried 
next Sunday. He consented. 

Rosa‘learned next Sunday morning that 
this was to be done; and her courage 
failed her. She did not go to church at 
all. 

She cried a great deal, and submitted 
to violence, aS your true women are apt 
to do. They had compromised her, and 
so conquered her. The permanent feel- 
ings of gratitude and esteem caused a re- 
action after her passion ;‘and she gave up 
open resistance as hopeless. 

Falcon renewed his visits, and was re- 
ceived with the mere sullen languor of a 
woman who has given in. 

The banns were cried a third time. 

Then the patient Rosa bought lauda- 
num enough to reunite her to her Christo- 
pher in spite of them all, and, having pro- 
vided herself with this resource, became 
more cheerful, and even kind and caress- 
ing. 

She declined to name the day at present ; 
and that was awkward. Nevertheless 
the conspirators felt sure they should tire 
her out into doing that before long; for 
they saw their way clear: and she was 
perplexed in the extreme. 

In her perplexity she used to talk toa 
certain beautiful star she called her Chris- 
topher. She loved to fancy he was now 
an inhabitant of that bright star; and 
often, on a clear night, she would look up, 
and beg for guidance from this star. This 
I consider foolish ; but then lam old and 
skeptical ; she was stiil young and inno- 
cent, and sorely puzzled to know her hus- 
band’s real will. 

I don’t suppose the star had anything 
to do with it, except as a focus of her 
thoughts ; but one fine night, after a long 
inspection of Christopher’s star, she 
dreamed a dream. She thought that a 
lovely wedding-dress hung over a chair; 
that a crown of diamonds as large as an 
almond sparkled ready for her on the 
dressing-table, and she was undoing her 
black gown, and about to take it off, when 
suddenly the diamonds began to pale 
and the white satin dress to melt away ; 
and in its place there rose a pale face and 
a long beard, and Christopher Staines 


391 


stood before her, and said quietly, ‘‘Is . 
this how you keep your vow?’’ Then he 
sank slowly; and the white dress was 
black, and the diamonds were jet: and 
she awoke with his gentle words of re- 
monstrance, and his very tones, ringing 
in her ear. 

This dream, co-operating with her pre- 
vious agitation and misgivings, shook her 
very much. She did not come down stairs 
till near dinner-time ; and both her father 
and Falcon, who came as a matter of 
course to spend his Sunday, were struck 
with her appearance. She was pale, 
gloomy, morose, and had an air of des- 
peration about her. 

Falcon would not see it. He knew that 
it was safest to let her sex alone when 
they look like that, and the storm some- 
times subsides of itself. 

After dinner Rosa retired early ; and, 
soon after, she was heard walking rapidly 
up and down the dressing-room/é 

This was quite unusual, and made a 
noise. 

Papa Lusignan thought it inconsider- 
ate; and after a while, remarking gently 
that he was not particularly fond of noise, 
he proposed they should smoke the pipe 
of peace on the lawn. 

They did so; but after a while, finding 
that Falcon was not smoking, he said, 
“Don’t let me detain you. Rosa is 
alone.”’ 

Falcon took the hint, and went to the 
drawing-room. Rosa met him on the 
stairs, with a scarf over her shoulders. 
‘‘T must speak to papa,’’ said she. ‘‘Where 
is he? ’’ 

‘‘He is on the lawn, dear Rosa,”’ said 
Falcon in his most dulcet tones. He was 
sure of his ally, and very glad to use him 
as a buffer to receive the first sheck. 

So he went into the drawing-room, 
where all the lights were burning, and 
quietly took up a book. But he did not 
read a line: he was too occupied in trying 
to read his own future. 

The mean villain who is incapable of re- 
morse is, of all men, most capable of fear. 
His villainy had, to allappearance, reached 
the goal; for he felt sure that all Rosa’s 
struggles would, sooner or later, succumb 


392 WORKS 


to her sense of gratitude and his strong 
will and patient temper. But, when the 
victory was won, what a life! He must 
fly with her to some foreign country, pur- 
sued from pillar to post by an enraged 
husband and by the offended law. And, 
if he escaped the vindictive foe a year or 
two, how could he escape that other enemy 
he knew and dreaded—poverty ? He fore- 
saw he should come to hate the woman he 
was about to wrong, and she would in- 
stantly revenge herself by making him an 
exile, and, soon or late, a prisoner or a 
pauper. 

While these misgivings battled with 
his base but ardent passion, strange things 
were going on out of doors, which, how- 
ever, will be best related in another se- 
quence of events, to which, indeed, they 
fairly belong. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


Sraines and Mrs. Falcon landed at 
Plymouth, and went up to town by the 
same train. They parted in London— 
Staines to go down to Gravesend, Mrs. 
Falcon to visit her husband’s old haunts, 
and see if she could find him. 

She did not find him; but she heard of 
him, and learned that he always went 
down to Gravesend from Saturday till 
Monday. 

Notwithstanding all she had said to 
Staines, the actual information startled 
her, and gave her a turn. She was 
obliged to sit down; for her knees 
seemed to give way. It was but a mo- 
mentary weakness. She was now a wife 
and a mother, and had her rights. She 
said to herself, ‘‘ My rogue has turned 
that poor woman’s head long before this, 
no doubt, But I shall go down, and just 
bring him away by the ear.’’ 

For once her bitter indignation over- 
powered every other sentiment, and she 
lost no time, but, late as it was, went 


OF CHARLES READE. 


down to Gravesend, ordered a private 
sitting-room and bedroom for the night, 
and took a fly to Kent Villa. 

But Christopher Staines had the start 
of her. He had already gone down to 
Gravesend with his carpet-bag, left it 
at the inn, and walked to Kent Villa 
that lovely summer night, the happiest 
husband in England. 

His heart had never for one instant 
been disturbed by Mrs. Falcon’s mon- 
strous suspicion.) He looked on her as 
a monomaniac, a sensible woman insane 
on one point—her husband. 

When he reached the villa, however, 
he thought it prudent to make sure that 
Falcon had come to England at all, and 
discharged his commission. He would 
not run the risk, small as he thought it, 
of pouncing unexpected on his Rosa, being 
taken for a ghost, and terrifying her, or 
exciting her to madness. 

Now, the premises of Kent Villa were 
admirably adapted to what they call in 
war a reconnaissance. The lawn was 
studded with laurustinas and other 
shrubs that had grown magnificently 
in that Kentish air. 

Staines had no sooner set his foot on 
the lawn than he heard voices. He crept 
toward them from bush to bush; and, 
standing in impenetrable shade, he saw 
in the clear moonlight two figures—Mr. 
Lusignan and Reginald Falcon. 

These two dropped out only a word or 
two at intervals; but what they did say 
struck Staines as odd. For one thing, 
Lusignan remarked, ‘‘I suppose you will 
want to go back to the Cape. Such enor- 
mous estates as yours will want looking 
after.’’ , 

‘¢Hnormous estates !’’ said Staines to 
himself. ‘‘ Then they must have grown 
very fast in a few months.”’ 

‘¢Oh, yes!’ said Falcon; “ but-I think 
of showing her a little of Kurope first.’’ 

Staines thought this still more myste- 
rious. He waited to hear more; but the 
succeeding remarks were of an ordinary 
kind. 

He noticed, however, that Falcon spoke 
of his wife by her Christian name, and 
that neither party mentioned Christopher 


ee ee ee 


| 
: 


ee a 2 


A SIMPLETON. 


’ 


Staines. He seemed quite out of their 
little world. 

Staines began to feel a strange chill 
creep down him. 

Presently Falcon went off to join Rosa ; 
and Staines thought it was quite time to 
ask the old gentleman whether Falcon 
had executed his commission, or not. 

He was only hesitating how to do it, 
not liking to pounce in the dark on a 
man who abhorred everything like ex- 
citement ; when Rosa herself came flying 
out in great agitation. 

Oh, the thrill he felt at the sight of 
her! With all his’ self-possession, he 
would have sprung forward, and taken 
her in his arms with a mighty cry of 
love, if she had not immediately spoken 
words that rooted him to the spot with 
horror. But she came with the words in 
her very mouth, ‘‘ Papa, I am come to 
tell you I cannot and will not marry Mr. 
Falcon.”’ 

“¢Oh, yes! you will, my dear.”’ 

““Never! I’ll die sooner. Not that you 
will care for that. Jl tell you I saw my 
Christopher last night—in adream. He 
had a beard; but | saw him, oh,so plain! 
and he said, ‘Is this the way you keep 
your promise?’ That is enough for me. 
I have prayed again and again to his 
star for light. I am so perplexed and 
harassed by you all, and you make me 
believe what you like. Well, I have had 
a revelation. It is not my poor lost dar- 
ling’s wish I should wed again. I don’t 
believe Mr. Falcon any more. I hear 
nothing but lies by day. The truth 
comes to my bedside at night. I will 
not marry this man.”’ 

“Consider, Rosa, your credit is 
pledged. You must not be always jilt- 
ing him heartlessly. Dreams! nonsense. 
There—I love peace. It is no use your 
storming at me. Rave to the moon and 
the stars, if you like, and, when you have 
done, do pray come in and behave like a 
rational woman, who has just pledged 
her faith to an honorable man, and a 
man of vast estates—a man that nursed 
your husband in his last illness, found 
your child, at a great expense, when 
you had lost him, and merits eternal 


393 
gratitude, not eternal jilting. I have 
no patience with you.’’ 

The old gentleman retired in high dud- 
geon. 

Staines stood in the black shade of his 
cedar-tree, rooted to the ground by this 
revelation of male villainy and female 
credulity. 

He did not know what on earth to do. 
He wanted to kill Falcon, but not to ter- 
rify his own wife to death. It was now 
too clear she thought he was dead. 

Rosa watched her father’s retiring fig- 
ure out of sight. ‘‘ Very well,’’ said she, 
clinching her teeth. Then suddenly she 
turned, and looked up to heaven. ‘* Do 
you hear?’ said she. ‘‘My Christie’s 
star! I am a poor perplexed creature. 
I asked you for a sign; and that very 
night Isaw him in a dream. Why should 
I marry out of gratitude? Why should 
I marry one man when I love another ? 
What does it matter his being dead? I 
love him too well to be wife to any living 
man. They persuade me, they coax me, 
they pull me, they push me. I see they 
will make me; but I will outwit them. 
See, see!’? and she held up a little phial 
in the moonlicht.) 3 This i shall’ cute tne 
knot for me: this shall keep me true to 
my Christie, and save me from breaking 
promises [I ought never to have made. 
This shall unite me once more with him 
I killed and loved.”’ 

She meant she would kill herself the 
night before the wedding; which per- 
haps she would not, and perhaps she 
would. Who can tell? The weak are 
violent. But Christopher, seeing the 
poison so near her lips, was perplexed, 
took two strides, wrenched it out of 
her hand with a snarl of rage, and 
instantly plunged into the shade again. 

Rosa uttered a shriek, and flew into 
the house. 

The further she got, the more terrified ’ 
she became; and soon Christopher heard 
her screaming in the drawing-room in 
an alarming way. They were like the 
screams of the insane. 

He got terribly anxious, and followed 
her. All the doors were open. 

As he went upstairs, he heard her cry, 


. 


394 


“His ghost, his ghost! I have seen his 
ghost! No, no! I feel his hand upon 
my arm now. A beard! and so he had 
in the dream. He is alive. My darling 
is alive.’ You have deceived me. You 
are an impostor, a villain. Out of the 
house this moment, or he shall kill 
VOU. 

«“ Are you mad ?’’ cried Falcon. ‘“‘ How 
can he be alive when I saw him dead ? ”’ 

This was too much. Staines gave the 
door a blow with his arm, and strode 
into the apartment, looking white and 
tremendous. 

Falcon saw death in his face; gave a 
shriek, drew his revolver, and fired at 
him with as little aim as he had at the 
lioness; then made for the open window. 
Staines seized a chair, followed him, and 
hurled it at him; and the chair and the 
man went through the window together, 
and then there was a strange thud heard 
outside. 

Rosa gave a loud scream, and swooned 
away. 

Staines laid his wife flat on the floor, 
got the women about her; and at last she 
began to give the usual signs of returning 
Life eam 

Staines said to the oldest woman there, 
*‘If she sees me she will go off again. 
Carry her to her room and tell her, by 
degrees, that 1 am alive.”’ 

All this time Papa Lusignan had sat 
trembling and whimpering in a chair, 
moaning, “ This is a painful scene, very 
painful!’? But at last an idea struck him 
—‘‘WHY, YOU HAVE ROBBED THE OF- 
FICE ! ”’ 

Scarcely was Mrs. Staines out of the 
room, when a fly drove up; and this was 
immediately followed by violent and con- 
tinuous screaming close under the win- 
dow. 

“Oh, dear!’ sighed Papa Lusignan. 
** But never mind.”’ 

They ran down, and found Falcon im- 
paled at full length on the spikes of the 
villa, and Phoebe screaming over him, and 
trying in vain to lift him off them. He 
had struggled a little, in silent terror, but 
had then fainted from fear and loss of 
blood ; and lying rather inside the rails, 


WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


which were high, he could not be extri- 
cated from the outside. 

As soon as his miserable condition was 
discovered, the servants ran down into 
the kitchen, and so up to the rails by the 
area steps. These rails had caught him: 
one had gone clean through hisarm; the 
other had penetrated the fleshy part of 
the thigh, and a third through his ear. 

They got him off; but he was insen- 
sible, and the place drenched with his 
blood. 

Phoebe clutched Staines by the arm. 
«‘ Let me know the worst,’’ said she. “Is 
he dead ? ”’ | 

Staines examined him, and said, ‘‘ No.”’ 

‘*Can you save him ?”’ 

(<5 ae? 

“Yes. Whocan, if you cannot? “Oh, 
have mercy on me!’’ And she went on 
her knees to him, and put her head on his 
knees, 

He was touched by her simple faith ; 
and the noble traditions of his profession 
sided with his gratitude to this injured 
woman. ‘‘ My poor friend,’’ said he, ‘‘I 
will do my best, for your sake.”’ 

He took immediate steps for stanching 


the blood; and the fly carried Phoebe and 


her villain to the inn at Gravesend. 

Falcon came to on the road, but, find- 
ing himself alone with Phoebe, shammed 
unconsciousness of everything but pain. 

Staines, being thoroughly enraged with 
Rosa, vet remembering his solemn vow 
never to abuse her again, saw her father, 
and told him to tell her he should think 
over her conduct quietly, not wishing to 
be harder upon her than she deserved. 

Rosa, who had been screaming and cry- 
ing for joy ever since she came to her 
senses, was not so much afflicted at this 
message as one might have expected. 
He was alive; and all things else were 
trifies. 

Nevertheless, when day after day went 
by, and not even a line from Christopher. 
she began to fear he would cast her off 
entirely ; the more so as she heard he was 
now and then at Gravesend to visit Mrs. 
Falcon at the inn. 

While matters were thus, Uncle Philip 
burst on her like a bomb, “ He is alive! 


q 
{ 
q 
y 
. 
7 
+ 


A SIMPLETON. 395 


he is alive ! he is alive! ”’ 
a cuddle over it. 

““Oh, Uncle Philip! 
Porn er 4 

‘Seen him? Yes. He caught me on the 
hop, just as I came in from Italy. I took 
him fora ghost.’’ 

‘*Oh! weren’t you frightened ? ”’ 

‘¢Not a bit. I don’t mind ghosts. I’d 
have half a dozen to dinner every day, if 
I might choose ’em. I couldn’t stand 
stupid ones. But I say, his temper isn’t 
improved by all this dying. He is in an 
awful rage with you; and what for?” 

“Oh, uncle! what for? Because I’m 
the vilest of women.”’ 

‘‘Vilest of fiddlesticks! It’s his fault, 
not yours. Shouldn’t have died. It’s al- 
ways a dangerous experiment.”’ 

‘¢?T shall die if he will not forgive me. 
He keeps away from me and from his 
Chala 4 

“‘T’ll tell you. He heard in Gravesend 
your banns had been cried: that has 
moved the peevish fellow’s bile.”’ 

“It was done without my consent: 
papa will tell you so. And oh, uncle! if 
you knew the arts, the forged letter in 
inmy darling’s hand, the way he wrought 
on me. Oh, villain, villain! Uncle, for- 
give your poor silly niece, that the world 
is too wicked and too clever for her to live 
Wehbe 

‘‘ Because you are too good and inno- 
cent,’’ said Uncle Philip. ‘‘ There, don’t 
you be downhearted. [1] soon bring you 
two together again—a couple of ninnies. 
I'll tell you what is the first thing. You 
must come and live with me. Come at 
once, bag and baggage. He won’t show 
here, the sulky brute.’’ 

Philip Staines had a large house in Cav- 
endish Square, a crusty old patient, like 
himself, had left him. It was his humor 
to live in a corner of this mansion; though 
the whole was capitally furnished by his 
judicious purchases at auctions. 

He gave Rosa, and her boy, and his 
nurse, the entire first floor, and told her 
she was there for life. ‘* Look here,”’ said 
he, ‘‘this last affair has opened my eyes. 
Such women as you are the sweeteners of 
existence. You leave my roof no more. 


And they had 


Have you seen 


Your husband will make the same dis- 


covery. Let him run about and be 
miserable a bit. He will have to come to 
book.’’ 


She shook her head sadly. 

‘¢My Christopher will never say a harsh 
word tome. All the worse for me. He 
will quietly abandon a creature so inferior 
to him.”’ 

‘Stuff ! 7 

Now she was always running to the 
window in hope that Christopher would 
call on his uncle, and that she might see 
him; and one day she gave a scream so 
eloquent, Philip knew what it meant. 
“Get you behind that screen, you and 
your boy,’’ said he, ‘‘and be as still as 
mice. Stop—give me that letter the 
scoundrel forged, and the ring.’’ 

This was hardly done, and Rosa out of 
sight, and trembling from head to foot, 


when Christopher was announced. Philip 
received him very affectionately, but 


wasted no time. ‘‘ Been to Kent Villa 
yet?” 

‘*No,’’ was the grim reply. 

“’ Why not?” 

«Because I have sworn never to say an 
angry word to her again; and, if I was 
to go there, I should say a good many 
angry ones. Oh! when IJ think that her 
folly drove me to sea, to do my best for 
her, and that I was nearer death for that 
woman than ever man was, and lost my 
reason for her, and went through toil, 
privations, hunger, exile, mainly for her ; 
and then to find the banns cried in open 
church with that scoundrel—say no more, 
uncle. I shall never reproach her, and 
never forgive her.”’ 

“‘She was deceived.”’ 

‘1 don’t doubt that ; but nobody has a 
right to be so great a fool as all that.”’ 

“‘Jt was not her folly, but her inno- 
cence, that was imposed on. You a 
philosopher, and not know that wisdom 
itself is Sometimes imposed on and de- 
ceived by cunning folly! Have you for- 
gotten your Milton ?— 


‘* At Wisdom’s gate Suspicion sleeps, 
And deems no ill where no ill seems.” 


Come, come: are you sure you are not a 


396 WORKS OF CHARLES 


little to blame? Did you write home 
the moment you found you were not 
dead ?”’ 

Christopher colored high. 

‘*Hvidently not,’’ said the keen old 
man. ‘Aha! my fine fellow, have I 
found the flaw in your own armor? ”’ 

“T did wrong; but it was for her. I 
sinned—for her. I could not bear her to 
be without money ; and I knew the insur- 
ance. J sinned for her. She has sinned 
against me.’ 

‘* And she had much better have sinned 
against God, hadn’t she? He is more 
forgiving than we perfect creatures, that 
cheat insurance companies. And so, my 
fine fellow, you hid the truth from her 
for two or three months.”’ 

No answer. 

“Strike off those two or three months: 
would the banns have ever been cried ? ”’ 

“Well, uncle,’”? said Christopher, hard 
pressed, ‘‘] am glad she has got a cham- 
pion; and I hope you will always keep 
your eye on her.”’ 

‘‘T mean to.”’ 

**Good-morning.”’ 

‘No: dont be in a hurry. Ll shave 
something else to say, not so provoking. 
Do vou know the arts by which she was 
made to believe you wished her to marry 
again?” 

‘‘T wished her to marry again! 
you mad, uncle?’’ 

‘“Whose handwriting is on this enve- 
lope ?”’ 

“Mine to be sure.’’ 

<‘ Now read the letter.’’ 

Christopher read the forged letter. 

‘¢Oh, monstrous! ”’ 

“This was given her with your ruby 
ring, and a tale so artful that nothing 
we read about the devil comes near it. 
This was what did it. The Earl of Tad- 
caster brought her title and wealth and 
love.”’ 

“What, he too! The little cub I saved, 
and lost myself for. Blank him! blank 
hiv 

“Why, you stupid ninny! you forget 
you were dead. And he could not help 
loving her: how could he? Well, but 
you see she refused him; and why? Be- 


Are 


READE. 


cause he came without a forged letter 
from you. Do you doubt her love for 
yous? 

‘“Of course I do. 
as I loved her.”’ 

‘‘Christopher, don’t you say that be- 
fore me, or you and I shall quarrel. Poor 
girl! she lay in my sight, as near death 
for you as you were for her. I’ll show 
you something.”’ ) 

He went to a cabinet, and took out a 
silver paper: he unpinned it, and laid 
Rosa's beautiful black hair upon her 
husband’s knees. ‘‘ Look at that, you 
hard-hearted brute!’? he roared to 
Christopher, who sat, anything but 
hard-hearted, his eyes filling fast at 
the sad proof of his wife’s love and 
suffering. 

Rosa could bear no more. She came 
out with her boy in her hand. ‘Oh, 
uncle! do not speak harshly to him, or 
you will kill me quite.”’ 

She came across the room, a picture of 
timidity and penitence, with her whole 
eloquent body bent forward at an angle. 
She kneeled at his knees, with streaming 
eyes, and held her boy up to him. 
‘‘ Plead for your poor mother, my darl- 
ing: she mourns her fault, and will never 
excuse it.”’ 

The cause was soon decided. All Phil- 
ip’s logic was nothing, compared with 
mighty nature. Christopher gave one 
great sob, and took his darling to his 
heart without one word; and he and 
Rosa clung together, and cried over each 
other. Philip slipped out of the room, 
and left the restored ones together. 

I have something more to say about 
my hero and heroine, but must first deal 
with other characters, not wholly unin- 
teresting to the reader, I hope. 

Dr. Staines directed Phoebe Falcon how 
to treat her husband. No medicine, no 
stimulants; very wholesome food, in 
moderation, and the temperature of the 
body regulated by tepid water. Under 
these instructions, the injured but still 
devoted wife was the real healer. He 
pulled through, but was lame for life, 
and ridiculously lame; for he went with 
a spring halt, a sort of hop-and-go-one 


She never loved me 


i ee ee 


A SIMPLETON. 


that made the girls laugh, and vexed 
Adonis. 

Phoebe found the diamonds, and offered 
them all to Staines in expiation of his 
villainy. ‘‘See,’’ she said, ‘‘he has only 
Spent one.’’ 

Staines said he was glad of it for her 
sake; for he must be just to his own 
family. Hesold them for three thousand 
two hundred pounds. But for the big 
diamond he got twelve thousand pounds ; 
and | believe it was worth double the 
money. 

Counting the two sums, and deducting 
six hundred for the stone Mr. Falcon had 
embezzled, he gave her over seven thou- 
sand pounds. 

She stared at him, and’ changed color 
at so large asum. ‘ But I have no claim 
Onctitat. sir... 

“«Thatis a good joke,’’ said he. ‘‘ Why, 
you and | are partners in the whole thing 

you and land Dick. Why, it was with 
his horse and rifle I bought the big dia- 
mond. Poor, dear, honest, manly Dick. 
No, the money is honestly yours, Mrs. 
Falcon ; but don’t trust a penny to your 
husband.”’ 

‘* He will never see it; sir. I shall take 
him back, and give him all his heart can 
ask for, with this; but he will be little 
more than a servant in the house now, as 
long as Dick is single: I know that.”’ 
And she could still cry at the humiliation 
of her villain. 

Staines made her promise to write to 
him; and she did write him a sweet 
womanly letter, to say that they were 
making an enormous fortune, and hoped 
to end their daysin England. Dick sent 
his kind love and thanks. 

I will add, what she only said by im- 
plication, that she was happy, after all. 
She still contrived to love the thing she 
could not respect. Once, when an offi- 
cious friend pitied her for her husband’s 
lameness, she said, ‘“‘ Find me.a face like 
his. The lamer the better: he can’t run 
after the girls, like some.’’ 


Dr. Staines called on Lady Cicely Tre- 
herne. The footman stared. He left his 
card. 


397 


A week afterward she called on him. 
She had a pink tinge in her cheeks, a 
general animation, and her face full of 
brightness and archness. 

“‘ Bless ine !’’ said he bluntly, “is this 
you? How you are improved !”’ 

‘“ Yes,’’? said she. ‘‘ And lam come to 
thank you for your pwescwiption. I fol- 
lowed it to the lettaa.”’ 

‘Woe is me! I have forgotten it.’’ 

‘““You diwected me to mawwy an ice 
man.”’ 

‘* Never: I hate a nice man.”’ 

‘“‘No, no, an Iwishman; and I have 
done it.”’ 

“*Good gracious! you don’t mean that ! 
I must be more cautious in my prescrip- 
tions. After all, it seems to agree.”’ 

“«* Admiwably.’’ 

“‘He loves you? ”’ 

“To distwaction.”’ 

‘* He amuses you? ”’ 

‘‘Pwodigiously. Come and see.”’ 


Dr. and Mrs. Staines live with Uncle 
Philip. Theinsurance money is returned ; 
but the diamond money makes them very 
easy. Staines follows his profession now 
under great advantages—a noble house, 
rent free; the curiosity that attaches to 
a man who has been canted out of a ship 
in mid-ocean, and lives to tell it. .And 
then Lord Tadcaster, married into an- 
other noble house, swears by him, and 
talks of him: so does Lady Cicely Mun- 
ster, late Treherne; and, when such friends 
as these are warm, it makes a physician 
the center of an important clentelle ; 
but his best friend of all is his unflagging 
industry, and his truly wonderful diagno- 
sis, which resembles divination. He has 
the ball at his feet, and, above all, that 
without which worldly success soon palls 
—a happy home, a fireside warm with 
sympathy. 

Mrs. Staines is an admiring, sympa- 
thizing wife, and an admirable house- 
keeper. She still utters inadvertencies 
now and then, commits new errors at odd 
times, but never repeats them when ex- 
posed. Observing which docilitv, Uncle 
Philip has been heard to express a fear, 
that, in twenty years, she will be the 


398 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. 


wisest woman in England. ‘“‘ But, thank 
Heaven!’ he adds, ‘“‘ I shall be gone be- 
fore that.’’ 

Her conduct and conversation affords 
this cynic constant food for observation ; 
and he has delivered himself oracularly 
at various stages of the study: but I can- 
not say that his observations, taken as a 
whole, present that consistency which en- 
titles them to ‘be regarded as a body of 
philosophy. Examples: in the second 
month after Mrs. Staines came to live 
with him, he delivered himself thus: 
‘‘My niece Rosa is an anomaly. She 
gives you the impression she is shallow. 
Mind your eye: in one moment she will 
take you out of your depth, or any man’s 
depth. She is like those country streams 
I used to fish for pike when I was young. 
You go along, seeing the bottom every- 
where; but presently you come to a cor- 
ner, and it is fifteen feet deep all in a 
moment, and souse you go over head and 
ears: that’s my niece Rosa.”’ 

In six months he had got to this—and, 
mind you, each successive dogma was de- 
livered in a loud, aggressive tone, and in 
sublime oblivion of the preceding oracle. 
“‘ My niece Rosa is the most artful woman. 
(You may haw, haw, haw! as much as 
you like. You have not found out her 
little game: I have.) What is the aim 
of all women? ‘To be beloved by an un- 
conscionable number of people. Well, she 
sets up for a simpleton, and so disarms 
all the brilliant people, and they love her. 
Everybody loves her. Just you put her 
down in a room with six clever women, 


and you will see who is the favorite. She 
looks as shallow as a pond, and she as 
deep as the ocean.’’ : 

At the end of the year he threw otf the 
mask altogether. ‘‘ The great sweetener 
of a man’s life,’’ said he, ‘‘is a simpleton. 
I shall not go abroad any more: my 
house has become attractive: I’ve got 
a simpleton. When I have a headache, 
her eyes fill with tender concern, and she 
hovers about me, and pesters me with 
pillows. When Iam cross with her, she 
is afraid Iam ill. When I die, and leave 
her a lot of money, she will howl for 
months, and say, ‘I don’t want his 
money: I waw-waw-waw-waw-want my 
Uncle Philip, to love me and scold me.’ 
One day she ttold me, with a sigh, I 
hadn’t lectured her fora month. ‘I am 
afraid I have offended you,’ said she, ‘ or 
else worn you out, dear.” When I am 
well, give me a simpleton, to make me 
laugh. WhenlI am ill, give me a sim- 
pleton, to soothe me with her innocent 
tenderness. A simpleton shall wipe the 
dews of death, and close my eyes; and, 
when I cross the river of death, let me 
be met by a band of the heavenly host, 
who were all simpletons here on earth, 
and too good for such a hole, so now they 
are in heaven, and their garments always 
white—because there are no laundresses 
there.”’ 

Arrived at this point, I advise the 
Anglo-Saxon race to retire, grinning, to 
fresh pastures, and leave this champion 
of ‘‘a simpleton ’’ to thunder paradoxes 
in a desert. 


END OF VOLUME EIGHT. 


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